


To Change Our Way of Caring

by sixappleseeds



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Disability, Finn's a bookworm, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hospitalization, Injury Recovery, Intergalactic Skyping, Introspective Finn, M/M, Nightmares, glorious speechifying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6718021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixappleseeds/pseuds/sixappleseeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't we give ourselves one more chance? Why can't we give love that one more chance? ...Cause love's such an old-fashioned word, and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary are lines from "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie
> 
> All the glitter to TheSmudgyOne, who once again proved her invaluable skill as a beta reader here. Thank you thank you thank you.

There are moments when a life changes irrevocably. Singular points in time, marked forever by a before, and an after. A series of small choices, culminating in a wholly different direction.

Tiny seeds, planted over years in an unconscious mind, germinating suddenly.

FN-2187 was cleaning a corridor one day, mind drifting into the stasis he maintained while working, when, quietly, the thought unfurling in his brain before he could stop it, he realized that he had never known what it was to be friends with someone. Immediately on the heels of this revelation came another: he _wanted_ to.

Some of the pirated vids passed around regiments, incomplete clips for tablet and holopad and only illegal if you were caught with them, covered friendship. He’d watched holos of young aliens yammering in different languages, playing with brightly-colored toys and singing songs together. And he had seen telenovelas of humanoids, adults who ate strange-looking foods on blankets under trees, or had boisterous conversations at tables in brightly-colored rooms. Sometimes the characters became upset, but they talked and said “sorry” and eventually grinned again. Sometimes they took trips, or went on missions.

Sometimes they embraced one another. 

If there was one thing that all the friends in all the clips he’d ever seen had in common, it was that they smiled at each other, and laughed together. 

FN-2187 had a knack for remembering things from almost every year of his life, but he could not remember ever experiencing anything like what he saw on those shows.

A beeping maintenance droid ran into him. He realized he was staring at the blank wall of the corridor, sweeper in hand. He tucked his thoughts away, hid them well, and continued his work. If the wanting took root there, at the back of his brain where no-one could see, he wasn’t looking either.

Then Slip was killed during the raid on Jakku. Those carefully ignored epiphanies came roaring back, and FN-2187 was filled with the awful certainty that he _could not do this_. His first real test as a Stormtrooper, and he had failed. 

Captain Phasma’s rebuke was softer than he deserved, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that even his exemplary record as an ensign would not save him. If he failed one more time, they’d space him. Unfortunately he was also certain that he could never face combat again.

Entering that interrogation cell on the _Finalizer_ , FN-2187 had no idea what he’d find in the rebel they’d captured. The man had met Kylo Ren, but it was possible he was still functioning, still a person. 

“You need a pilot,” Dameron had said, proving he not only retained all of his faculties but that the man was actually willing to go along with FN-2187’s non-plan. He himself was shaking in his armor, his bodysuit soaked in sweat, he’d just told the top pilot in the Resistance that he was running from the First Order, and still Dameron agreed. Possibly it was because he wasn’t getting any better offers.

And then Dameron grinned. “We’re gonna do this,” he’d said, and for the first time in his life, FN-2187 — _Finn_ — answered another person’s smile with one of his own.

Within minutes of fleeing the _Finalizer_ , Finn knew that even if he and Poe were blown to smithereens by the TIEs chasing them, even if he ultimately was spaced, he’d die with a friend. That was closer to real freedom than Finn had ever let himself hope he could be. 

.

Beeping. A steady beeping, and it wouldn’t stop. Everything was very heavy, and he wanted to sleep. Or he had slept. Or he was still sleeping?

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

He blinked, blinked again, and opened his eyes. 

A striated ceiling loomed above him, dim light from a high window casting everything orange. More light shone through an open doorway to his right. An apparatus was attached to his face. Oxygen. Just oxygen, hopefully. Twitching his fingers was difficult, but flexing his wrist sent pain stabbing up his shoulder. Shoulder? 

He tried his other wrist — that was fine, though both arms felt weighted, somehow. Was he tied down? As he moved to look, fire screamed down his back and he cried out, discovered that vocalizing anything felt like knives in his throat, and collapsed. The beeping became frenetic. Several more sensors joined in, their sounds like hammers in his brain. 

The mask felt glued to his face, and he couldn’t raise his hands to rip it off.

He hoped he wasn’t somebody’s prisoner.

Sudden chirping, from beyond the doorway and distinct from the sensors. He tilted his head slightly to watch a familiar orange and white droid roll into the room. BB-8 adjusted its lens to peer up at him and he widened his own eyes in a mix of relief and desperation. The droid chortled and zoomed off again, maybe to get someone who could tell him where he was, and why he hurt so much.

Sure enough, footsteps clattered down the hall. _Please be friendly_ , he thought wildly. _Please don’t hurt me, please make it stop hurting, please let me go..._

A human with spiky hair and a khaki jumpsuit strode into the room. “Hey-o Finn, rise and shine!” They pressed a few buttons on a nearby monitor, and the noises stopped. “You woke up early, kid, else I would’ve been here. Alright, let’s get this off...”

The person — a nurse? — replaced his oxygen mask with a much smaller set of breathing tubes. “Just for the next twenty-four hours or so, until we make sure you’re properly awake.”

Finn tried to ask, “How long was I out?” What he actually said sounded a lot more like a series of croaks. Craven gods of shadow, it hurt to talk. He swallowed, and that hurt too. He settled for peering imploringly up at the nurse.

“Yeah,” they said, reading the monitor. “That’ll happen. Induced coma for fourteen days, you’re gonna need a drink. Hold tight a minute, I’ll be right back.” 

Finn contemplated the cracked ceiling while he waited. It seemed he had been rescued by someone with adequate medical technology and a desire to keep him alive. Seeing BB-8 was certainly relieving. 

He began to tenderly prod his memories and discovered with some horror that he’d spent his coma dreaming. He hoped they were dreams. Footsteps echoed in the hall again, and Finn focused on them, and then on the nurse’s shoulder patch — there was the Rebel Starbird. Surely this was a good sign. 

The nurse held a cup of orangish liquid with a straw. He was grateful for the straw.

“That’s mostly water with some electrolytes and a throat-soother,” they said, directing the straw to his mouth. “Let’s just see how you handle it.” 

Finn told his stomach very sternly that it had better not vomit, or all this medical assistance would be wasted, as he would die of mortification. He hadn’t puked since he was a kid, not since — 

_Focus on the present, Finn._

While he drank (“Easy,” the nurse said, “you’re on a drip, it’s not like you’re dehydrated here”), Finn experimented again with flexing his fingers and toes. His right side was considerably better than his left, though his shoulder hurt. After several minutes the nurse took the cup away.

“Okay, before you nod off again — yeah you’re off the drugs but trust me, you will be sleeping a lot, for a while — some things you should know.” The nurse produced a tablet and turned it on, blue screen illuminating their face. 

“This is Dr. Kalonia’s general assessment, she’ll be in to see you later today. In short you survived some major slicing and dicing by way of a lightsaber. We had the front and side delts in your right shoulder regrown, rudimentary synthetic nerves installed, still awaiting complete cohesion there. Back’s worse, but let’s just say the fact that you can move your toes is a miracle. Unfortunately we haven’t got a real bacta tank here so your recovery will take some time, but you’re doing an incredible job so far.

“And before you start itching to move,” the nurse added as Finn wiggled the toes on his left foot with more vigor. “When you wake up again you’ll be on your belly. No tank means no immersion, but thank your lucky stars we have the gel or you’d be immobile for months. You understand me? You’re gonna fall asleep again, and when you wake up you’ll be on your belly, with goop on your back. Four hours a day you get that. Blink twice if you understand.”

Finn tried nodding, but his back screamed and he grimaced. The nurse raised a brow. He blinked twice. His eyes felt very heavy.

“Good,” they said. “That funny little astromech droid’s been hovering like it’s your personal moon, so I imagine you’ll have at least one visitor soon. Try to rest though, okay?”

“Okay,” Finn whispered. Whispering didn’t hurt, quite. “Wait,” he said, struggling to stay awake. “Where am I, again?”

The nurse barked a laugh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t say? This is D’Qar. Resistance HQ. Welcome to your new home, Finn.”

.

He slept, and the nightmares chased him. Finn clawed his way to consciousness again and again; with no clocks in sight it was impossible to tell if he was falling under for minutes or hours. The ceiling remained above him, stone-carved and vine-scarred. In the dim light it seemed brown, brown — _Focus, Finn_ — brown meant rounded edges and soft places and safe, comforting darkness. Nothing in his dreams was this color, everything was blinding white, sharp-edged, cold. Flashes of red, and terror like suffocation. _Breathe, Finn_.

Brown, like Poe’s skin, Poe his first friend, who had run across the tarmac to embrace him like Finn was Poe’s friend, too. He hoped BB-8’s presence here meant Poe was okay. He couldn’t contemplate the alternatives right now.

Rey. Rey was also his friend, though she’d spent the first ten minutes of their acquaintance trying to kill him. And then she’d embraced him on Starkiller Base, after he’d left her on Takodana, after he’d told her the truth about him and how he’d betrayed her with his lies. Instead of becoming angry with him (as he would’ve done, he thought now, shamed), she’d nodded as if it all made sense, and then she’d wished him well. He hoped she was okay, too.

He had friends, he told himself firmly. He had memories his nightmares couldn’t reach. Friends hugged, and friends touched in ways that didn’t hurt, and what Finn wouldn’t give for a hug right now. The pain searing his chest had nothing to do with his injuries, and he bit back a gasp. Somehow in the midst of trying to catch his breath and trying not to cry (crying would definitely hurt), he fell back asleep, and this time he did not dream.

.

When Finn opened his eyes again, it was so bright he had to squint. As the nurse had warned, he was on his belly, face pressed into a sort of padded cup. He now had an excellent view of the floor, and his back was cold.

Was it still morning? Was that daylight, illuminating his extremely limited view? He heaved a sigh, felt his muscles snarl with it. The breathing tubes in his nose chafed, and, padded headrest or no, his cheekbones and forehead ached. Four hours of this, and then — what? A view of the ceiling again?

A droid trilled nearby, and BB-8 rolled into view.

“Hey!” he whispered. The sight of BB-8’s lens focusing up at him made Finn feel stupidly close to tears. The droid beeped, rolled a short way around, and tittered insistently. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and it must be a different nurse, a different shift, because these feet were clearly booted and — 

“Finn! Buddy, you’re awake!” 

Stars below it was _Poe_ , he was alive and he was here and now Finn really was crying, eyes squeezed shut and breath hitching terribly and tears undoubtedly dripping on the damn floor.

“Hey now, hey, easy,” Poe said softly, voice suddenly very close. “Don’t worry about that — here, here now this is even clean —” A soft cloth, a gentle touch on Finn’s cheek, brushing against his eyelids, wiping around the tubes in his nose. “Can’t even blow your nose by yourself, and ain’t that the shitter?”

Despite himself Finn half-smiled, and blinked open his eyes. Poe was indeed quite close, sitting on the floor by the headrest, craned back so he could see Finn’s face. Finn met his eyes and the two of them stared at each other for a moment. Then Finn said, voice flat as possible, “I am so embarrassed right now.”

Poe’s face disappeared for an instant as he laughed. He was wearing his orange flightsuit, sleeves tied around his waist, and what looked to be a maroon undershirt. “Finn buddy,” Poe said, leaning under the table to see him again. “Do not worry about it. Listen, this one time at the Institute I got food poisoning, okay? It was terrible. My roommate had to drag me into the showers because I couldn’t stop puking, only every time I puked I shit too. Worst part was, there was literally nothing I could do to stop it, I just had to ride it out. Poor Kala,” he added fondly. “She still speaks to me, if you can believe that.” 

Finn didn’t know what to do with a story like this, but he appreciated Poe’s effort. “How long have I been here?” 

BB-8 beeped and trilled just out of Finn’s view. “Wow really?” Poe said, twisting to look over his shoulder. Finn reminded himself to learn Binary as the droid chirped and Poe replied, “Yeah I guess you’re right.” 

He leaned back to Finn, bracing himself on his hands. “It’s been fifteen days since the attack on Starkiller Base. Rey and Chewie brought you back here, but, ah, Han...” Poe slumped a little.

“I know,” Finn whispered. He breathed a sigh.

“Yeah, well.” Poe studied the floor. For the first time it occurred to Finn that Poe would have known Han Solo, had maybe even worked under him in the Resistance. His fingers twitched. If he’d been able, he would’ve — oh, what, lay a hand on Poe’s shoulder? Something.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, uselessly.

Poe cleared his throat and looked back up at Finn. “Anyway,” he said, trying a smile. “You’ve been in here for about two weeks, give or take a few hours. I’m sure it’s boring as hell,” he added, “but I’m glad you’re awake.”

“Thanks,” Finn said lightly. “Laying immobile on my face is how I always dreamed of passing my days. I think I’ll take it up as my next profession.” 

Poe peered at him, and the smile came back around his eyes. “You are hilarious,” he said.

“Sarcasm is an effective coping mechanism for many diverse situations,” Finn intoned. 

Poe looked delighted, then said, “Hey, you gonna cry anymore?”

“Fuck, I hope not.” 

“It’s not a problem,” Poe replied. “It’s just that,” he lay down so his head was on the floor directly under Finn’s. “I don’t want your snot on my face, you know?” 

Finn grinned, and it felt like his first real smile in weeks. It probably was. “I could spit in your eye,” he said.

Poe smirked up at him. “You could, but you probably won’t.”

“Probably not.” 

They gazed at one another, not saying anything, and Finn felt warm inside, like a beam of light had taken up residence in his chest. It didn’t hurt, not even a little, though it was wonderfully distracting. He thought this might be what friendship felt like.

“Did I mention I’m glad you’re alive?” Poe murmured eventually.

“Did I mention I’m glad _you’re_ alive?” Finn returned. “I wasn’t sure you’d made it.”

“Nah, I was fine.” He sobered. “Not everyone was, of course. We lost some. R1, Ello… Of course we knew it wouldn’t be a clean run, that’s not something you count on, but…” He shook his head, and looked back up at Finn. “My luck held.” 

Finn would have nodded if he could’ve, and settled for pursing his lips instead. “Hey,” he said then. “Speaking of luck, how did you get off Jakku? I looked for you!” 

“Ha,” Poe said, grinning again. “Well that is a story.” 

They spent the next while catching up. What began as Poe simply telling his story evolved into him and Finn and BB-8 attempting to reconstruct everything that had happened since they’d all met three weeks before. 

“And what did you think of Maz?” Poe queried at one point.

“She’s interesting,” Finn said, unsure of how to interpret the way Poe was peering up at him. “You know her?”

“I’ve dealt with her,” Poe replied. He was smirking. “Must’ve been a decade ago now.” His grin faded, and he looked somewhere just beyond Finn’s line of sight. “I hate that we couldn’t save her place. Twenty minutes too damn late.” 

They lapsed into silence. Finn wondered if there were conversations he could have with Poe that didn’t bring up terrible memories.

“Did you get to meet Rey?” It was funny how deeply important these two people were to him, and he wasn’t even sure if they’d been introduced.

“Sure did,” Poe said. “Just after we all returned — the medics had you by that point.” He described how the General had called for a debrief and Skywalker’s droid, R2-D2, had woken up and everyone realized BB-8’s map fit like a puzzle piece inside the map Artoo had saved on its hard drive. “We all started cheering and jumping, and I grabbed the person nearest to me and spun them around, only I realized it wasn’t someone I knew.”

“She let you hug her?” Finn wasn’t sure whether to envious or impressed. 

Poe looked sheepish. “I didn’t give her much of a choice. It was a joyous moment, okay? I apologized.”

“I told her about you,” Finn said, and watched Poe smile. 

“Yeah, she seemed to know who I was.” He paused. “I wish I could tell you she was here. I’m sure she’d love to see you awake too.”

“She’s hunting for Skywalker, isn’t she?” Finn wouldn’t say that he knew Rey particularly well, not yet, but it was the best reason he could think of for why he hadn’t seen her yet.

Poe nodded. “They should almost be there by now. Chewie’s with her, of course; they took the _Falcon_. It’s about a three week trip if all goes well, way out in the middle of nothing.”

“Is anyone in contact with her, then?” The idea that Rey might be so far away as to be out of relay range was an awful one.

“The General,” Poe replied. “I’ll tell her to pass along the news that you’re awake, okay?”

Finn smiled, more because it felt good than because he felt like it at the moment. “Yeah, that’d be great,” he said. 

“Mister Dameron,” a voice said drily from somewhere behind Finn. “Visiting hours aren’t until this evening. Get off the floor.” 

Poe winked up at Finn and then rolled to his feet. Finn suppressed a sigh at the decidedly less-interesting view below him.

“That’s _Commander_ Dameron, Dr. Kalonia,” Poe said, sounding cheeky.

“Poe, I have known you since you were a shrimp at the Institute, be grateful I use _Mister_.” The doctor sounded like a person who did not impress easily. Or maybe she was just unimpressed with Poe. Finn smiled to himself. 

A hand — Poe’s hand, Finn could see the edge of Poe’s leg and boots just at the limit of his field of vision — brushed Finn’s head gently, and then Poe was evidently shooed away as the doctor took his place. She was wearing sturdy-looking maroon boots, and loose tan trousers.

“I’ll be back tonight, okay Finn?” Poe called.

“That’d be great,” Finn replied, suddenly feeling stupid and embarrassed all over again. He couldn’t even wave goodbye. Being conscious was terrible. But actually — “Wait! Poe?”

Hurried footsteps. “Yeah, buddy?”

Finn imagined the doctor rolling her eyes, squashed the thought, and then said, “If I’m asleep wake me up okay? I don’t want to miss you.”

Poe laughed. “Sure thing, Finn. I don’t want to miss you either.” 

“Well, Finn,” Dr. Kalonia said after a pause. “Nice to see you making friends. Let’s get the gel off you and then it’s back to bed.”

Finn thought the goop might be working; two nurses removed layers of it from his back and he only felt a couple of highly-endurable twinges. 

But when the nurses (humans, the skinny one from before, and one very burly male) rolled him gently back onto the hospital bed, Finn decided any lack of pain a moment ago had been a delusion on his part. He gasped, managed to turn a scream into another gasp, and slowly relaxed onto the bed. The nurses fussed with his tubing, punched buttons on the monitor screen, and adjusted the bed so he was partially sitting. 

“This will get easier over the next few days, Finn,” Dr. Kalonia was saying. She was tall, with bushy brown hair and a sardonic gaze. “The gel’s not as effective as a proper bacta tank, but it will accelerate your healing, and should prevent too much scarring.” Finn struggled to breathe normally while the doctor described his prognosis for the next forty-eight hour cycle. “I kept you under for as long as I thought safe, but you’ve made remarkable progress and the sooner we begin your therapy, the sooner you’ll be on your feet again.”

It hadn’t occurred to Finn to worry about whether or not he’d be up on his own, but the doctor’s tone alarmed him. “I will walk again,” he said, looking into her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t smile, but this time she did sound more certain. “But before then, you have to regain your strength.” One of the nurses produced a pad and a stylus. “Write your name for me.”

Finn squinted up at her. “I know how to write my name, doctor,” he said, reaching for the stylus. The nurse placed the pad down on his lap, and he fumbled to take it. 

“I know you do,” she said.

For some reason the stylus was absurdly heavy. Was it weighted with lead? His shoulder spasmed as he adjusted the pad on his lap, and with considerable effort he managed to scrawl his name. _Finn_. Two Ns. His arms ached like he’d just done thirty reps with free weights. “What is wrong with me?” he murmured.

The doctor sighed. “Unfortunately one of the consequences of a prolonged coma is severe muscular atrophy. Nurses Kele and Ludo here will be working with you every day, in order to help you build up your strength and regain as much mobility as possible. With the synthetic nerves in your shoulder and along your spine, it is probable that you’ll carry the traces of this injury for the rest of your life, but given your progress so far I think it’s fair to say you will walk again, in time.”

For a brief, horrible moment, Finn wished he had died instead. Weeks, possibly months spent in this bed yawned before him, caught in a body reduced to infancy. He took a breath, and then another. The doctor was looking down at him, compassion lining her face. Finn took another breath. “Would it be possible,” he managed after a minute of silence. “To ask for some telenovelas?” 

.

After Dr. Kalonia left, Kele spent an hour guiding Finn through some very basic exercises and stretches he could do from his bed, the effort of which left him utterly exhausted. Kele also showed Finn how to dose himself with painkillers via his drip, how to dim or raise the lights from his bed, and how to call for a nurse using his tablet. They then made Finn promise not to attempt to use his bedpan by himself. 

“I know you think it’s embarrassing, kid,” Kele said with some sympathy. “But trust me, it’s worse for one of us to come in and find you on the floor covered in your own shit.” 

Finn mumbled his acquiescence, but kept his eyes on his lap until Kele finally left. 

He was dozing fitfully when Poe returned later that evening. “Hey buddy,” Poe said softly, knocking on doorframe to Finn’s room. BB-8 pushed its way past Poe’s legs and zoomed over to Finn’s bedside, beeping brightly. “I brought you a present.” Poe held up a tablet and a small program-stick. 

Finn’s back ached, and every un-careful breath sent pain shooting from his neck to his leg. His right shoulder was throbbing, and thanks to the day’s activities, he felt as weak as a baby. Still, Poe and his droid seemed so _happy_ , happier than anyone here had a right to be, honestly, so Finn mustered a smile in return.

“What is it?” he said. His voice didn’t sound too weary, probably.

Poe strode into the room, his own smile redoubling. Finn let himself be distracted by the way that smile made the little lines by Poe’s eyes curl. “Want to talk to Rey?” he asked.

Finn blinked. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“So you’ll use this tablet,” Poe said, gently nudging BB-8 out of the way. “And then I have a program that will connect you. Grabbed it straight from the General’s own comm-station.”

“...Did you ask first, or will I have to explain this later?” He watched as Poe sat in the chair by Finn’s bed and turned on the tablet. It was about the size of a datapad, but with a much larger screen.

“I always ask,” Poe said. “Okay, okay,” he added when BB-8 squawked. “Asking for forgiveness works better where the General’s concerned, but in this case I did get permission too.”

Poe take a small flimsiplast from his pocket and type the sequences it held onto Finn’s tablet. “How do you know how to do this?” Finn asked.

“Just because I’m a pilot doesn’t mean I’m incapable of installing tablet programs,” Poe said, fingers dancing lightly over the screen. “Also, this one’s easy once you have the access codes.”

“That’s what you stole from the General.” Finn realized he was leaning over to watch Poe work only when his back seized. He swallowed his gasp.

“That is what I suggested to the General you would perhaps appreciate having in your possession,” Poe replied, not looking up. “And she thought it was a fine idea, though she suggested in return that we don’t tell anyone else.” 

“Why, are the calls traceable?” What a terrible thought.

“Whoever has the access code could in theory trace its path back to the _Millennium Falcon_ , but there are seven different relay points between here and there, and they’d have to be looking real hard.” Poe shook his head, then shrugged. “Nah, I think the General’s more concerned that if the code gets out, some of the younger folks here, and probably Threepio, won’t be able to stop themselves from calling Luke.”

“Oh,” Finn said. “Huh. He must really be something.”

Poe smiled. “Yeah, he is.” 

The tablet beeped. “Ah, here we go.” Poe ejected the program stick and scooted his chair closer. “Okay, let me show you how to send a transmission.” 

It was pretty simple, considering how remarkable the technology was. Stormtroopers did not place or receive inter-galactic calls, and certainly not from their personal comm-devices. 

Poe explained that Chewbacca was already on alert for messages from the General, so it wouldn’t be a problem to send a message to Rey as well.

“The lag-time between when you press ‘send’ and when it comes into the _Falcon_ will be about twelve hours, though if they’re still in hyperspace it’ll be more than that. When you call, give Rey the access codes for your tablet” — Poe pointed to a line of code on the flimsiplast — “and she can send her reply directly to you. The transmissions are still technically recorded,” he added apologetically, “but only on this tablet. Way more private than sending messages via the comm stations.” Poe winked. 

Finn frowned at this, but let this slide. “Thank you,” he said instead. 

Which was how, a few hours of restless sleep later, Finn made his first call to Rey.

Propping the tablet up on the little lap table spanning the bed, he opened the vid program. He glanced at the doorway, wondered if anyone walking by would think he was talking to himself. But talking to himself was not a punishable offense here; if anyone asked what he was doing, he would tell them, and that, very likely, would be that. He pressed _[Record]_.

“Hi Rey!” he began, staring at the tablet’s camera. “I don’t know if this is working, if it’s not then I really am talking to myself, but if it is --” He beamed. “Look, I’m awake! I woke up this morning, and it’s weird, I’m so weak I can’t even hold this tablet on my own --” He waved a hand at the tablet’s screen, limp-wristed. 

“But I’m not in too much pain. Well a little bit. Okay and a lot when I move. But the doctor said I’m healing really well -- I’ve got synthetic nerves now! And muscles too! I can’t see them, they’re mostly on my back, but it’s bizarre to think about.” 

He paused, and then added, “I’ve been in a lot worse pain, don’t worry. They have me laying face-down on a table every morning, and they put this goop on my back for a few hours, I guess for the next couple of weeks. No bacta tank, though you probably know that already, but the stuff -- it’s like this gel, a little cold, but relaxing? It’s supposed to be helping.”

He began balancing the tablet with his other hand. “It’s weird talking this way. I don’t know how you’re doing, how are you doing? Did you find Luke? Is he going to come back with you? How’s Chewie? What’s Luke like? Is he angry you found him?

“I’m okay, like I said. There’s an actual doctor here, and nurses. In the First Order, we — they — only had medical droids. I don’t know if the Resistance just can’t afford med-droids or if these people defected too, or what, but it’s …” He paused, thinking about Kele’s nonchalance and the way Dr. Kalonia’s expression softened when she gave Finn her prognosis. “It’s different. I don’t mind it.

“They told me how the next few days are going to go. Um. In case you were wondering. After the goop time, Kele, one of my nurses, washes that off, and him and Ludo — that’s my other nurse — put me back in bed and spend a hour making me do exercises. Strength training stuff, but, stars Rey, I lost all my muscles in the coma and I can hardly move on my own. Like, I can’t even get out of bed. I have tubes sticking out of my body,” he gestured to his nose, and his wrist, with the drip. “I have to use a _bedpan_ , because I literally can’t move by myself.”

He realized he was scowling and shook his head. “Anyway, like I said I just woke up so it can only get better from here, right? I do have this tablet, and Kele installed some learning programs on it, so when I’m not doing therapy or sleeping I can watch vids.

“To be honest, though…” He darted a glance to the door, listened for a moment, and dropped his voice. “Rey, I don’t know why I’m here. I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know why they’re doing all this for me. I mean —”

He paused, shocked. “…I just realized I haven’t thanked you for saving me. Rey. _Rey_. You saved my life. I would have died. I know the fact that I’m here at all is because of you.” He had to take a minute to press his mouth shut and stare hard at the far wall.

“Sorry,” he said finally. “I should have said that first, I really should have. Thank you.”

And he couldn’t very well complain after that, not to her, maybe not to anyone. He looked back at the screen. “Anyway. I really hope you’re okay, and that you see this and that I haven’t just been talking to myself for the past five minutes. And if you can see this, send me something back. You can link to this tablet, even.” He gave her the access codes. 

“I hope I hear from you. I miss you. I don’t really know anyone here besides Poe, and obviously he’s busy.” A little red warning light began flashing in the corner of his screen. “Oh,” he said. “Only thirty seconds left. Well — call me back, okay? Take care.” He waved, and stared at the screen for a moment before remembering to push _[Stop]_.

.

And so Finn made his recovery. 

His days became routine: Mornings he spent on his belly, goop smeared across his back and shoulder, followed by one hour of rest and light repast. This was Kele’s term for it; Finn was on a liquid diet and had begun to daydream about carb cubes and ration bars, anything he could actually chew. After that came the physical torture of Kele and Ludo’s therapy sessions, which left Finn soaked in sweat and filled with a twisting mix of self-loathing and determination. Then he had a bath. Kele helped him with the bath, and with the times he needed to use the bedpan, or empty his catheter bag. More than once Finn recalled Poe’s ridiculous food poisoning story, and reminded himself that there was nothing he could do. Kele was not embarrassed, and Finn would not be either. He would get stronger — he was getting stronger — and soon he’d be able to take a shit by himself.

After the bath he rested, usually slept, often dreamed. He was too tired by that point in the day to waste much energy dreading his dreams. They were never very great, and once Kele mentioned that if he ever wanted to talk to someone, they did have a counselor on base. Finn replied that if the dreams didn’t fade after he was up and out of this room, he’d look into it.

As for Poe, he came by after dinner — his dinner — with gossip and news and usually BB-8, who had a variety of telenovelas stored on its hard drive. Sometimes they watched a show, usually something funny, and Finn began looking forward to those moments when he and Poe would meet each other’s eyes and laugh together. Those moments pulled him through the rest of it.

Rey didn’t return his call. He tried not to worry if he’d misspoken the access codes. 

He ended his days staring at the ceiling, listening to the med-wing outside his door quiet down for the night. For better or worse, here he was. Rey would call back soon. Tomorrow, he would laugh with Poe again. 

Tomorrow, he’d be stronger. Eventually he would stand up. And eventually, he would walk out of here. It was only a matter of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I'm sure I it made very obvious, I am not a medical professional, and I definitely took liberties with Finn's post-coma recovery. Anything I couldn't find out with easy Google searches I kinda made up. Forgive me?


	2. Chapter 2

  
  
Four days after Finn woke up, Kele handed him a real shirt and loose trousers following his bath.    
  
“Wow, really?”  When Kele nodded, Finn bundled up his starchy med-wing gown and flung it across the room. “Burn it,” he said, and Kele laughed.  
  
“Think you can manage those buttons by yourself, Finn?” Kele asked.  
  
Finn shot them a look. “Yes,” he said. The gown had tied in the back, which rendered Finn physically incapable of dressing himself. Proper clothing, though! He had the buttons done up in no time. Kele still had to help him into the trousers, but for the first time since waking Finn felt in like he was again charge of his own person.  
  
He was relaxing in his bed, looking up random words on his tablet’s dictionary, when someone knocked on the doorframe. Finn saw the shadow of a person, but it seemed they were actually waiting for permission to enter.  “Come in?” he called after a moment.  
  
General Organa poked her head inside.  
  
“Oh!” Finn said. “Sir!”  He frantically raised the bed to a sitting position. Should he salute? She wasn’t his general, not technically, but on the other hand he certainly couldn’t stand up —  
  
“At ease,” she said, coming in.  
  
Finn reached for his blanket. “General,” he said. “Ah. Thank you for stopping by. My apologies, I, ah …” He looked down at his hands clutching the blanket, and forced them to relax.  
  
“I am happy to see you’re awake, Finn,” the General said warmly. She gestured to the chair by his bed. “May I?”  
  
“Yes, please, be my guest,” Finn said. She sat, studying him. She was wearing dark colors, maroons and browns and greys, and her hair was done up in some complicated braid on top her head. She looked, Finn saw when he glanced at her face, deeply tired.  
  
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured. He probably shouldn’t have started the conversation, and certainly not with that, but the silence was making him nervous.  
  
She didn’t look away, but she did sigh softly.  “Thank you,” she replied.  
  
The pause that followed seemed inclined to become awkward silence again, so Finn tried once more. “To what do I owe this visit, sir?”  
  
The General leaned back, making the chair squeak.  “I wanted to see you,” she said.  “Dr. Kalonia says you’ve been making excellent progress, but I did want to give you a few days to wake up before visiting.”  
  
Finn had gotten briefly hung up on “excellent progress;” neither Kalonia nor the General seemed inclined to hyperbolize, so it took him a moment to hear what she’d just asked.  
  
“Of course I can give a full report, sir,” he said.  
  
“That’s good,” the General said. “I’ll send in a tech to record your statement. But I want you to tell me, first.”  
  
Finn paused. He relaxed his hands again. He’d met this small, self-possessed woman for less than a half an hour several weeks ago, before the mission to rescue Rey had sent everyone scurrying into action. In that time she and Finn had exchanged two, maybe three sentences.  
  
“How much time do you have?”  
  
Now the General smiled.  “I’ve cleared my schedule for the rest of the day. As long as you need.”  
  
Finn wondered briefly if Poe would pop by, what his reaction would be to seeing Finn with the General, but he didn’t think Poe would be surprised. He always spoke so highly of Leia Organa, as though he would literally lay down his life for her. Finn wasn’t sure he had ever felt that way, and it occurred to him that he might be ashamed of that.  
  
In any case, Poe clearly trusted his General, and since he trusted Finn too, for the barest of reasons, Finn thought he could do worse than tell Leia Organa the story she deserved to know.  
  
He started — not at his beginning, but near the beginning of the story she’d asked to hear. She was a good listener, better than Poe had been, in a way, because Poe kept interrupting to clarify details and the General saved her questions for the moments when Finn actually paused.  She snorted when he told her how he and Poe had escaped in the TIE fighter, and even laughed once, softly, when he described their subsequent crash.  
  
“It was a little scary at the time, sir,” Finn said, because it had been, and because he’d spent that whole nearly-lethal walk through Jakku’s desert alternately reeling at his own fate and feeling a shocking grief for Poe’s.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said, but her eyes still twinkled. “It’s just that I finally understand how you got that damn jacket.”  
  
“Oh,” Finn said.  
  
“Poe’s had it for a long time,” the General explained.  
  
This was significant, somehow, a piece to a story he didn’t know. He shrugged. “Shall I continue?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
She rolled her eyes when he told of meeting Solo and Chewbacca, leaned forward as he described Kanjiklub and the rathgars, but she didn’t interrupt. Finn didn’t think he should omit any detail he remembered about Han Solo, though he watched the General’s shoulders tense, and saw her features slowly pull into a pinched frown. When he finally came to Solo’s last moments, she was openly crying, tears running down her cheeks. He paused, horrified that he’d done this to her.  
  
“Finish the story, Finn,” the General said, voice quite calm.  
  
He swallowed, cleared his throat, and described what had happened in the depths of Starkiller Base as best as he could.  “I didn’t see it all,” he said when he’d finished. “And I couldn’t hear them. They were speaking, though — Solo, er, Han, I’m sure he was doing most of the talking.”  
  
“He always did.” The General pulled out a cloth from a vest pocket and began to carefully dab her face.  
  
“Just before he fell,” Finn said, because he’d only now remembered this. “Han sort of, reached out and put his hand on, on, on your son’s cheek. Just held it there. I don’t know if he said anything.”  
  
“That sounds like him, too.” She sounded tired again. “Tell me what happened next.”  
  
So Finn told her about Chewie shooting Kylo Ren, about the explosives detonating, about the flight back to the Falcon, and unexpectedly meeting Ren in the woods.    
  
“I don’t know how he got there so fast, he must have had a speeder,” Finn said. “I ... engaged him, with the lightsaber, after Rey was disabled. I didn’t last very long.”  More than anything, his failure to succeed here filled Finn with shame. If he’d been stronger, or smarter, he certainly wouldn’t be in this bed now, having to tell this story to General Organa.  
  
She reached out, placed a hand briefly over his fist on the blanket. “You lasted long enough,” she said.  Finn swallowed.  “Do you remember anything else?”  
  
Finn shook his head. “I’ve been trying,” he said. “I must have fought him for a little while, but I don’t remember anything after Rey getting knocked out, and picking up the lightsaber.” He paused. “Everyone’s afraid of him.”  
  
“Who?” the General said.  
  
Finn hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It wasn’t part of this story. He looked down at his hands again. “Among the Stormtroopers. We — they — joke about it, about Ren and his tantrums, but.”  He should not say this. He could not say this. Not to this woman, deep in grief. Not to this general, the most powerful person on the planet.  
  
“Finn.”  He looked up, and she met his gaze with a level stare. “You have a perspective I have never been granted. He is my son. And, I will not absolve him of the consequences of his choices.”  
  
Finn hoped that whatever his future held, he would never find himself opposite Leia Organa. He nodded.  “Well,” he tried again. “It’s just that he is so angry, all of the time. Desperately angry. Whenever he shows up to briefings, everyone in the room’s afraid to breathe.”  Finn had never told anyone this before. It was both relieving and terrible to unburden himself now to Ren’s own mother.  
  
“Once he threw a commander out the airlock because the man tripped into him in the hallway.” He left out how it had been his squad sent to retrieve the commander’s body, bloated and broken, twenty minutes later. “He’s just so unpredictable,” Finn continued. “When he’s in one of his rages, not even General Hux can calm him down.”  He remembered how, during that last fight on Starkiller Base, Ren had kept pounding his injured side and snarling. He remembered the blood spattering on the snow.  “It’s like if he’s not angry, he doesn’t know who he is.”  
  
The General closed her eyes. “I am sorry,” she said.  
  
“No —” _no, that wasn’t right_ , “— General, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for...”  _Everything_ , Finn thought. He reached out, and she took his hand. “For bringing all this to you.”  
  
She squeezed his hand gently before releasing it, and sighed. “It would have come to me one way or the other, Finn,” she said. “Thank you for telling me your story. You’re good at it, I’ll remember that.”  Then she arranged her features into a smile, and rose. “I’ll send the tech in here to take your official statement.”  
  
She gazed down at him, and then turned to go. “I look forward to seeing you on your feet soon, Corporal. Rest well.”  
  
Finn watched her take one step, two, and then closed his mouth with a click. “ _Corporal_?” he choked.  
  
She looked back. Her smile was more genuine this time. “If you like. Think about it, but I want you with us, Finn. We’ll find a place for you.”  She met his stare for several long moments, nodded once, and walked out of the room.  
  
Finn heaved back onto his bed. A part of his brain observed that he was well enough to flop dramatically now, something that would have been very painful several days ago. The rest of him was rather dazed with shock.  
  
_Corporal_. It was so unexpected he wasn’t sure how to feel. In the many imagined scenarios he had worked through since waking up, he hadn’t let himself approach the idea that he might have an official place here. A _ranking_ place. The closest he’d come was deciding to offer his services as a janitor, on the assumption that it was a job no one ever really wanted and also a job he knew he could do. Even with limited mobility, if it came to that.  
  
For the first time, he was almost grateful for this enforced bed rest. The prospect of ruminating on this for days on end was — not appealing, because it was hard to think when he couldn’t physically act, but also somewhat relieving.  He’d considered leaving the First Order for years, albeit on a subconscious level; having some time to mull over the General’s offer was practically necessary.  
  
Finn turned all this over for several minutes, only to be interrupted again by a knock at the door. A uniformed woman entered, followed by a class five droid Finn didn’t recognize. He nodded to them both.  
  
“I’m Lieutenant Goode. With General Organa’s authorization, I’ll be debriefing you on the recent mission on Starkiller Base. The droid will be recording.”  
  
Finn gestured to the chair General Organa had recently vacated, but the lieutenant declined, so Finn shrugged and folded his hands in his lap. The droid motored over to Finn’s bedside, and he watched its lens adjust.  
  
“When you’re ready, Finn, we’ll take your statement, and then follow up with some questions.”  
  
In a way, this was easier than talking to the General. Finn knew how to give debriefs. And, while he had not been prepared for the General Organa’s audience, he’d figured that however fundamentally different the Resistance was from the First Order, debriefs were universal. Someone would ask him to give his statement, eventually. Finn had taken the time he spent on his belly each morning striving to remember everything, and figuring out how to condense it into words.

.  
  
His tablet beeped just before three in the morning, five short chimes that had Finn jerking awake. He winced as his back seized; nothing woke a body up like stabbing pain. It took him a moment of blinking at the ceiling, cast in its orangish glow from the lights outside the compound, to realize what had woken him. He fumbled for the tablet, still on the lap table, and deactivated the notification just as it began to beep again.  
  
_[Message Received]_ the screen informed him. Rey!  Fully alert now, Finn opened the comms program and pressed _[Download]_. The next thirty seconds took approximately ten years, but then a blue and grey vid-screen appeared, and there was Rey’s face beaming at him.  
  
“Finn!” she cried, her voice a little distorted and loud in the silence of the med-wing. Finn darted a look toward the doorway, but he didn’t have a headset and he certainly wasn’t muting the vid.  
  
“I hope this thing is working,” Rey was saying. “You’re right, it is weird talking to a screen. What time is it there? Oh, this was the best surprise!”  
  
She pressed her hands to her mouth, her eyes curving above her fingertips. There was a noise in the background, and Rey dropped her hands. “No I am _not_ going to cry again,” she said to someone beyond the camera.  
  
She looked back at Finn. “And yes, you made me cry, you big jerk,” but she said it with a smile and Finn wasn’t worried. “I am so happy to see you, and I wish you were here. I keep imagining you with Luke, and it makes me laugh, because you would find him exasperating.  He wasn’t angry we found him, not at all. He knew someone would come one day, I think. He didn’t want to be found, but — I’ve never met someone so used to being lonely. So resigned to it. Does that make sense?” She cocked her head and peered at him. Finn found himself nodding.  
  
“But then I imagine how Luke would react to you, and I think you could make him laugh.” Something about the way she said it made Finn wonder if Rey couldn’t do that. He hoped not. He didn’t like to think of all of Rey’s smiles going unreturned.  
  
“I’m fine by the way, since you asked. We’ve only been here about a day and, Finn. We’re on an island, and there is _so much water_. No matter where I look, there’s water, even bubbling up out of the ground, there are all these little streams running down to the sea. And the sea! Finn, I fell asleep to the waves last night, surrounded by water, and this morning the birds woke me up.”  She looked exultant.     
  
“And my hair —” she gestured, fingers fluttering around her head. “My hair is curly! I’ve lived my whole life thinking I had straight hair, but this morning I woke up and it was in all these tiny little curls. Luke says it’s the humidity — the water in the air — there’s water _in the air_ — and even Chewie’s curling up.”  
  
From beyond the camera Finn could hear a holler; Rey dimpled and called, “You look beautiful, too!”  There was a loud thump. Rey rolled her eyes, still grinning.  Finn grinned back at her.  
  
“It’s so good to see your face,” she continued. “And your hair has grown! I was surprised, is it really that long? The _Falcon_ has an old receiver, so it’s hard to tell. Are you going to let it grow, or will you trim it? You don’t have to wear a helmet anymore.”  
  
Finn brushed a hand over his hair and was startled to find it had indeed grown, well beyond regulation requirements. He’d have to fix that.  
  
“You’re joining the Resistance, right?” Rey continued. “I never got to ask you why you changed your mind — I’m glad you did, of course, but it occurred to me that maybe you’re still planning to go off to the Outer Rim somewhere and I’ll never see you again. This doesn’t count.” She gestured at the screen. “Well it counts but you know what I mean.”  
  
She frowned at him, looking impressively ferocious in the blue and grey coloring. “You will join the Resistance,” she said. Then she blinked and her mouth bowed up into a grin. “I suppose only if you want to. But why wouldn’t you want to? We can defeat the First Order together!”  
  
Her smile faded.  “You know, it was actually Chewbacca who saved us. I beat Kylo Ren,” and the way she said his name twisted her mouth into a sneer. “But the whole planet was breaking up, right under our feet, and I was so tired I could barely move, and I thought we both were about to die.”  
  
She looked away. “That was a really bad moment, just before he found us. I found you,” she looked up again, into the camera. “But the land was cracking and shaking — it was horrifying, actually — and you were unconscious, and I told myself to be grateful that I’d die with a friend.”  
  
Finn felt tears tracking down his cheeks, and reached to scrub them away even as he watched Rey wiping her own knuckles over her eyes. “Sorry,” she said.  
  
“No,” Finn murmured. “It’s okay.”  
  
“Anyway,” she said on a sigh. “I thought you might want to know that.  And — oh, blast it, there’s a notice saying I have thirty seconds left. Well!” She smiled bracingly. “Keep getting better! I want to see you walking by the time I come back! And send me more messages! Tell me everything. I can’t wait to hear from you, bye for now!”  She waved, and the vid stopped with a blip.  
  
Finn sank back into his pillow with a sigh and stared at the ceiling for several minutes. So he could talk to Rey, and she could talk to him. She was right: it wasn’t the same as being together, but it was still very good. She was his friend, and he was hers, and they could talk to each other from across the galaxy. What an incredible thing that was.  
  
He watched the vid again.  Then he watched it a third time, trying to memorize everything from Rey’s inflections to the quirks of her eyebrows to the way the light was shining on her face.  No one from the med-wing had bothered him, but he didn’t know if the comm program would let him save the message. He wanted to be able to recall as much of it as he could, whenever he wanted.  
  
The tablet informed him it was approaching 0400 when he finally shut it off.  He drifted back to sleep with Rey’s smile shining in his head, and a mirroring smile on his own face.

.  
  
The next day, Finn had just finished his afternoon meal — one of the room-temperature, sweetened protein purees Kele insisted he imbibe, disgusting as they were — when there was another knock on his doorframe.  
  
“I must be Mr. Popular all the sudden,” he muttered.  “Yeah?”  
  
Poe poked his head in. “Hey!” he said. “Day off for most of us, so I brought some folks over to say hi.”  A small crowd of people clustered around Poe. Someone waved.  
  
BB-8, impervious as ever to human ideas of decorum, nearly tripped Poe in its effort to push into the room. It rolled over to Finn’s bed, beeping a sequence Finn had come to recognize as a greeting.  
  
“Hey there, BeeBee-Ate,” he said. “How’re you?”  
  
The droid tittered and rocked back and forth.  
  
“Yeah we’re gonna tell him, don’t worry.” Poe and the others wandered in. “Just let me do introductions first. Finn, this is Snap and Jess. Some of my best pilots, they put up with me ‘cos they have to.”  Snap, a man whose face seemed entirely taken up by a full black beard, reached over to shake Finn’s hand, while Jess, a woman about half Snap’s size, gave him a cheery smile. Finn smiled back.  
  
“And here are our miracle workers,” Poe continued. “Oona,” he gestured to a gray Ewok, “has fixed BB-8 more times than I can count, and Shivi here,” he waved a hand at a Togruta woman with striking orange and white skin, who nodded, “is our chief field medic. I’m not sure why these two put up with me but I appreciate it.”  
  
“Pleased to meet you all,” Finn said, trying to ignore, once again, how awkward it was to be unable to stand.    
  
Oona bustled up to Finn’s bed to say something. Finn leaned over to listen before he realized it wasn’t in Basic. He’d never met an Ewok before; he made a mental note to learn some of the language.  
  
“She said,” Shivi translated, “‘Thank you for saving Poe’s ass.’”  
  
This made Jess and Snap laugh very hard.  “Someone’s always doing it,” Snap said.  
  
Poe threw himself into the chair by Finn’s bedside. “And I appreciate it every time!”  Finn noticed how the lines around Poe’s eyes were curled with his grin, how everyone in the room suddenly seemed to be smiling.  He relaxed a little.  
  
“Anyway,” Poe began. “I had this idea.”  
  
Finn watched Jess and Snap set up chairs and unload a large bag of what looked like snack foods. He slid Poe a look.  
  
“Normally on days off a bunch of us watch vids together, and I was feeling bad that you couldn’t come, so I thought we’d bring the party to you.”  Poe turned the full force of his grin onto Finn.  
  
“We’ve got an entire series of _The Great Corellian Cook-Off_ ,” Jess exclaimed. “I swear though, if that Hutt judge is back I’m walking out.”  
  
“You will not,” Snap said, sitting in one of the chairs. “You have too much fun yelling at the screen to walk out.”  
  
“We are not watching the whole series here,” Poe announced. “Or anything at all, if Finn wants us to leave.”  He turned back to Finn. “I probably should have asked you first,” he said quietly. “If you’re too tired we can go.”  
  
“I am a little tired,” Finn admitted. Rey’s 0300 call had him yawning all day. “But, this show is good?”  
  
“It is so good.” Jess threw her arms in the air. “Even Shivi likes it and Shivi doesn’t like hardly any shows about humans.”  
  
Shivi, from her chair near where Oona was sitting, laughed. “That is not true! Only I find them nonsensical. This show is more authentic in its portrayals of humans than most of the stories you watch.”  
  
“Listen to her,” Jess said fondly. “Calling my space operas garbage, and doing it so nicely.”  
  
Eventually they all settled down. BB-8 projected the show onto Finn’s far wall. Snap and Jess passed around crinkly packets of food; Finn, still nauseated from how quickly he’d downed his liquid snack earlier, politely declined.  
  
He watched the show, and it was engaging, though it did make him crave food that didn’t come pureed. He also watched the others.  Finn realized he found Snap’s beard so startling only because facial hair was forbidden in the First Order. The man was also enormously tall; even seated he towered over everyone. Only the peaks of Shivi’s striped montrals were taller.  
  
Jess seemed full of energy in a way that reminded Finn of Poe; she was constantly switching positions in her chair, or fiddling with the snacks, or leaning over to whisper something to Shivi, who’s attention was statue-like in contrast.  
  
Oona sat on the floor, and wore a vest littered with pockets. Finn could see tools, and maybe a comm-device, protruding from a few. He tried to remember everything he’d been taught about Ewoks, and what he came up with seemed, suddenly in the presence of one, incorrect and probably offensive.  
  
He watched as Oona dug into one of her pockets and produced her own crinkly snack package. She tore it open, sending crumbs flying, and Finn tried to ignore this, because she immediately offered the bag to Shivi.  
  
Poe, beside him, glanced at Finn every time the contestants in the show did something clever or unbelievable, and Finn glanced back. It wasn’t hard to start laughing or groaning with the others; some of the contestants made really questionable culinary decisions.  Not that Finn had any experience with cooking, actually, but that was part of what made watching so fun.  By the third episode Jess was throwing food wrappers at the wall — the Hutt judge was back — and apologizing every time.  
  
“I hope you starve, you sack of mud!” she hollered. “Sorry, Finn! We’ll clean up before we leave, promise!”  
  
“And by ‘we will,’” Snap said, “she means she will.”  
  
“Shh!” Shivi hissed. “The Twi’lek is on, I like her!”  
  
But toward the end of the fourth episode, Finn was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He’d become surprisingly invested in several of the contestants’ stories, including Shivi’s Twi’lek, who seemed to have a good shot at winning, but his back was aching and he longed to just lay his bed flat and fall asleep. Everyone was having such a good time, though.  His grim little room was filled with laughter, with people doing friendship, good people who would maybe someday become friends with him, too.  It would be alright if he fell asleep, probably.  
  
As the cheery end-tune played over the episode, Poe glanced at him.  Finn smiled sleepily back.  Poe really was just so wonderful to look at.  
  
Poe blinked. “Thanks,” he whispered.  
  
“Oh,” Finn said. “Did I say that out loud?”  
  
For a moment Poe looked at him, a fond sort of expression on his face that made Finn feel fuzzy with happiness, and then he turned to the room.  “Alright folks, let’s move this party elsewhere, give our buddy here some peace and quiet.”  
  
In a matter of minutes, they had gathered the snack bags, collapsed the extra chairs, and tidied Finn’s room. BB-8 produced a small vacuum mechanism and bustled about, clearing crumbs from the floor. Jess and Snap thanked Finn for playing host and promised to return to visit soon. Shivi, who worked in the med-wing when she wasn’t on field duty, asked if she could visit again the next day.  
  
“Of course,” Finn said, while a part of his brain commenced worrying about how to be worth visiting when there weren’t vids to provide the entertainment.  
  
Oona chirped a string of syllables at him, which Shivi translated: “This was a very nice time. But you need to eat more. You won’t be strong enough to walk again if you don’t eat.”  She dug into one of her vest pockets and proffered another packet of sweets, which Finn accepted.  
  
“How do you say ‘Thank you’ in Ewok?”  He looked from Oona to Shivi. Poe, he noticed, was grinning.  
  
Oona made three distinct sounds, and repeated them twice.  Finn mimicked what he heard as best as he could. Oona beamed, and then reached up to pat his arm. Her paw was rougher than it looked.  
  
“See you later!” Jess called. The four of them gathered the chairs and filtered out of Finn’s room.  
  
Finn looked up at Poe, stifling a yawn.  “How often do you guys get days off?”  
  
Poe tucked his hands in his pockets. “Depends on what’s going on, but we try for once a week.”  He rocked back on his heels, a grin lurking at the corners of his mouth.  “You wanna find out who wins, don’t you?”  
  
“No spoilers!” Finn flapped his hands.  “This is the first time I’ve gotten to watch a series from start to finish, I don’t want to know how it ends yet.”  
  
Poe laughed a little, and lifted a hand toward Finn’s, seemingly on impulse.  He checked himself and let it fall.  “Anyway,” he said. “BeeBee-Ate and I’ll let you get some sleep.”  
  
Finn reached for Poe anyway. Poe’s hand was warm, and dry, and felt good inside his. If he’d been able to stand, he would’ve given Poe a hug, because Finn was sleepy and content and the idea of holding onto someone — to a friend — seemed perfect right now.  He settled for squeezing Poe’s hand.    
  
“You’ve got good ideas, Poe Dameron,” he mumbled. “This was a good one. Thanks, for thinking of me. I like your friends.”  
  
“I like ‘em, too,” Poe murmured. He wiggled his fingers gently in Finn’s, and then carefully eased back.  “Sleep well, Finn. See you tomorrow.”  
  
“Yep,” Finn said.  He was asleep before Poe and BB-8 made it to the door.


	3. Chapter 3

  
  
Finn sent his reply to Rey after his morning gel routine, as he’d taken to calling the whole procedure of being moved onto the table, laying facedown with goop smeared across his back, having the goop wiped off four hours later, and being returned to bed after. Dr. Kalonia assured him it was helping, and maybe it was, but Finn still couldn’t roll his shoulders without pain lancing down his back, let alone sit up without support. At least he was learning to sleep on his belly.  
  
Finn knew that the twelve hours it took to relay a message from his tablet to the comm console on the _Falcon_ meant he wouldn’t hear back from her until tomorrow at the earliest. It was both strange and novel to have this extended conversation with Rey, knowing each of them was waiting hours, perhaps days, for the other’s reply.  
  
“Rey!” he said, staring at his screen’s flashing green light and pretending it was Rey’s face instead.  
  
“It’s about eleven-hundred here. I got your message around oh-three-hundred the other morning, and I meant to reply yesterday but I fell asleep instead.” He grinned at the screen. “I played it three times, back to back to back, until I couldn’t stay awake any more.”  
  
“I couldn’t really see your curly hair, but I trust you. My hair’s always been curly, but of course I always kept it pretty short.” Running a hand over his hair, startled again by how big it had gotten, he shook his head. “Yeah, this is way too much. I asked one of my nurses and they’re going to send someone tomorrow to give me a trim.”  
  
He paused, trying to remember what else Rey had said.  
  
“It’s been years since I’ve seen an ocean, and that was in training so I don’t think about it much. I wish I could see yours, though, it sounds beautiful. What did you do today? Did you go swimming? Wait, you probably can’t swim, can you? I can teach you, when you get back! There’s a lake here, I think, and it’s really not that hard.”  He was pretty sure it wasn’t that hard. Or it hadn’t been, before.  
  
“Anyway. You said Luke was _exasperating_ , and — look, it’s not like I doubt you, but I’m having trouble seeing it. I mean, we learned — I was taught — that Skywalker was this character, someone made up by the Rebels. But on the other hand they also told us he was the worst terrorist in a whole group of terrorists. Like, he killed millions of people — innocent civilians. But maybe that’s made up, too, I don’t know.”  
  
Finn thought about Starkiller Base, and his interview with General Organa.  “I guess we’ve sort of killed millions of people now too, though.  Does the fact that they were going to kill us make it okay? That their leadership was — is — genocidal? Or does it just mean that none of us is blameless in all this?”  He sat back, frowning.  
  
“Another thing I was told is that Leia Organa is supposed to be this ice-hearted saboteur who spent the last thirty years assassinating anyone who stood in her way.  But yesterday she came to see me, and even if I still believed what they told us — which I _don’t_ — but, stars, Rey, I made her cry. I didn’t mean to,” he added hastily, imagining Rey’s expression. “But she wanted to hear my version of the story, and by the end of it she was crying. I’ve never seen a person cry before, except in vids.”  
  
He paused, remembering again how small she’d seemed, sitting in the chair beside his bed, and how utterly solid.  “Poe would go to the ends of the galaxy for her, and I think I’m starting to see why.”  
  
There was a little niggling feeling worming its way around his mind.  Finn shook his head once, sharply.  “Sorry,” he said to the screen. He offered a smile.  “I just caught myself wondering if yesterday was all an act. It wasn’t.”  
  
Leia’s offer loomed in his mind —  _corporal_  — the very thing a general might use to entice a vulnerable captive. He shook his head again. “It _wasn’t_.”  
  
Finn stared at the opposite wall, aware of the allotted seconds on this transmission ticking down. “Well,” he said finally. “If you think I’d like Luke Skywalker, then I definitely want to meet him. I guess it’s just that I can’t believe he’s actually real, and, what did you call him? Tired?”    
  
His smile felt easier this time. “Is he teaching you anything? Are you going to be a Jedi?”  He said it half in jest; even if Luke Skywalker was real, the Jedi Order was still firmly mythological as far as Finn was concerned. Then he considered.  
  
“…You’d probably be really good at it, actually.” He felt like he should elaborate, but it seemed important to have the right words here, so he just nodded firmly instead.  
  
Adjusting his hold on the tablet, he tried to roll his shoulders, and winced. “Everything hurts today, sorry,” he said. “You’d think it wouldn’t, because of the nerve damage, but Dr. Kalonia said what I’m feeling is everything around the injuries. That and the new muscle tissue, it’s growing into me. That’s mostly in my shoulder —” he pointed with his chin “— but they grafted some of it onto my back too, apparently. The real pain there, though, is the synthetic nerves. I guess they’re still figuring out what to do, when. I wish they’d hurry up.  Kalonia said the pain’s going to decrease over the next few weeks, and the more strength training I do the better I’ll feel but…”  
  
A warning bubble popped up on the screen, telling him he had thirty seconds left.  
  
“Damn short transmissions,” he said. “Anyway I shouldn’t complain. I just don’t know what to do with myself, with all this enforced rest time. You got any suggestions? Tell me how you are! Say hi to Chewie for me! And Luke too I guess, if you want.”  He waved, and pressed _[Stop]_ and then _[Send]_ with seconds to spare.

.  
  
“Got a surprise for you, kid,” Kele said that afternoon, following Finn’s physical therapy session.  Ludo, who’d stepped out a few minutes before, strode in back into the room, pushing a wide-looking chair on two huge wheels. No, four wheels, Finn saw as he looked closer. The chair had straps bundled over the seat, and a tall hooked pole rising behind.  
  
Finn caught himself gaping.  “Is that … is that for me?”  
  
“Yep,” Kele said. Ludo bowed slightly.  
  
Finn really must’ve looked shocked, because Ludo asked, “They don’t have these, where you came from?”  
  
He shook his head. His body was twinging from strength-training exercises, but he wanted to sit in the chair. He wanted to _move_.  “Excellent medical tech, sure, but anyone too injured for a bacta tank was sedated and spaced.” Finn saw his nurses’ expressions and managed to shrug.  
  
After a moment, Kele shrugged too. “Thank the stars for wheelchairs, then,” they said.  
  
Ludo handed Finn his assortment of tubing and bags, and gently lifted him into the chair. Sitting this far upright hurt; Finn discreetly dug his thumbnails into the tender skin at the base of his fingers and breathed. Kele strapped him in while Ludo threaded Finn’s tubing over the hooked pole behind him.  
  
The straps were really digging into Finn’s torso.  “Posture,” Ludo rumbled. He’d been slouching; he made a mental note to sit up whenever the straps hurt again.  
  
Kele crouched in front of him. Finn eyed their profusion of spiky hair, wondering suddenly what Rey would think.  
  
“Technically you’re not strong enough for this thing yet,” Kele said. “But using it’s the fastest way to get stronger.  Plus, you find a friend able to get you in and out of bed, then you’re no longer stuck in this little room.”    
  
They nodded when Finn grinned. “You friends with Shivi yet? Yeah? Well she’s stronger than she looks. Coupla other folks in this wing are, too. You need help, don’t hesitate, okay? Neither of us wants to find you on the floor.”  
  
“No,” Finn agreed. “Can I move now?”  
  
Kele laughed and sat back. “You get as far as you can, and we’ll make sure you get back here.”  
  
Finn looked to either side of his seat. There were the wheels, and then an outer rim, the grip probably. He set his hands there, took a deep breath, and pushed. Stars, it hurt. But the chair rolled forward about half a meter, and he laughed.  
  
“Look at me,” he cried. “I just moved myself, all by myself!” The straps kind of felt like a five-pointed seatbelt; he immediately imagined he was a pilot.  He pushed again, and nearly collided with the wall.  
  
Kele grabbed the chair and pointed him at the doorway. “We’ll also make sure you don’t run into anything,” they said.  
  
“Posture!” Ludo ordered again.  Finn stuck out his tongue, straightened his spine, and pushed his chair forward once more. His arms were screaming and his back was on fire. There was no way he was stopping.  
  
“Look out world, Finn has gained the hallway,” he yelled. “Lock up your droids, I am coming through!”  
  
The med-wing opened before him, filled with a collection of glowing monitors, half-curtained beds, and personnel bustling through various doorways.  Finn saw Shivi standing near a door marked SUPPLY, and returned her wave enthusiastically.  A few of the other staff stopped to cheer his name. Finn gave a little bow, or the best he could manage from his position, pressing his hand to his chest and nodding in an approximation of something he’d seen once on a telenovela.  
  
“Great to see you up, Finn!” someone called.  
  
“It’s great to be up,” he replied, beaming in their general direction. Being only a half a meter off the ground meant his line of sight was filled with consoles and bed curtains; he seen Shivi entirely because of the height of her montrals.  
  
“Which way’s out?” he asked his therapists.  
  
“Try heading to your right,” Kele said. “And don’t push yourself.”  
  
“Ha.”  Finn pushed the wheels again and caromed forward. “Try and stop me.”  
  
“Oh,” Ludo muttered somewhere behind him. “You will do that all by yourself.”  
  
He made it as far as the doors to the med-wing — just inside the doors, and that effort nearly killed him. “Okay,” he panted to Ludo. “You were right.”  
  
“Congratulations, kid,” Kele said. “That was over twenty meters. Of course, you won’t be able to move tomorrow, but we’ll make you move anyway.”  
  
“What’s on the other side?” If he couldn’t get out now, he reasoned, he’d ask Shivi later. Or Poe, if he came by. That would be fine, Finn assured himself, staring at the doors, one meter and an impossible distance ahead of him. His arms felt like wet towels — wet, aching towels — folded on his lap.  It would be fine if they made him wait a few more hours to get out. Definitely.  
  
“Main entrance hub for the base,” Ludo replied. He and Kele remained standing by Finn’s chair.  
  
“…So can we go through, or are you going to deny me even that sweet, sweet taste of freedom?”  He’d picked that up from a pirated telenovela too; judging by Kele and Ludo’s startled laughter, it’d been worth remembering.  
  
“Mouth like that, Finn, it’s a miracle you survived long enough to find us,” Kele said. They pushed a button on a panel, and the doors slid open.    
  
Finn looked down at his lap as Ludo guided the chair through a short hallway, and told himself Kele was just joking, that they were not actually interested in hearing how Finn did survive, but somehow that just made him feel worse.  He shoved the feeling aside — _think about it later, Finn_ — because the second set of doors at the end of the hall whisked open.  
  
“This is the entrance bay,” Kele said as Ludo pushed Finn through and showed him how to lock the wheels on his chair. “Primary access points to most of the facilities on base are via this area. Mess and barracks are down that way,” Kele leaned over Finn’s right shoulder to point, “tactical’s that way,” to a set of stairs on Finn’s left, “and the hangars are through those doors over there.” They pointed ahead of Finn, towards a wide set of double-doors.  
  
Not much bigger than the med-wing, this space was bustling with people and droids, though it seemed everyone was heading somewhere, and in a hurry about it. Finn saw several people in distinctive orange jumpsuits striding from the barracks to the hangar, but Poe wasn’t among them. A few people glanced over and waved — “Hey, Finn! You’re up! Good to see you!” — and Finn waved back, though he didn’t recognize anyone.  
  
“Your story is very popular, Finn,” Ludo said, after the third time this happened. “You are an inspiration to many in the Resistance.”  
  
Finn tried to twist around to look at Ludo. “An inspir— _what?_ ” His entire torso was a multi-part chorus of pain, he was strapped into a chair because he couldn’t sit up on his own, he had tubes coming out of his body, and he couldn’t even move to look Ludo in the eye. “Morale must be in worse shape than I’d thought.”  
  
Kele opened their mouth to say something, when the hangar doors opened again.  
  
“Hey!” a voice shouted. “Finn, is that you?”  
  
“Oh, boy,” Finn heard Kele mutter. Poe was jogging towards them, grinning, BB-8 rolling at his side and Snap and Jess trailing behind.  
  
Finn grinned and spread his hands. “Look at me,” he said. “I’m busting out of this joint!”  
  
“Wonderful,” Poe cried. “Karé told me she’d seen you out here.”  He nodded to Ludo and Kele, and crouched in front of Finn. “It’s so great to see you out of bed, buddy.”  BB-8 whistled in agreement, and bent to inspect the wheelchair.  
  
Poe had this way of smiling without actually smiling, like his whole face had relaxed its way into a grin without him having to bend his lips. It felt like basking in the presence of a small sun, and like the only thing Finn’s face could do in return was smile back.  
  
“I got myself all the way to the med-wing doors,” he said, sharing his smile with Jess and Snap now too.  
  
Jess whooped and gave him a high-five, which was something Finn had previously only seen people do in pirated clips, and Snap’s grin cut his face, his teeth very white against the beard. Poe punched Finn’s leg lightly, looking thrilled. “That’s fantastic, Finn!” he said. “You’ll be on your feet in no time.”  
  
“That’s the plan,” Finn said. He felt better than he had in days, sitting right here.  
  
“While I hate to break this up, Commander,” Snap said, “we’ve gotta report.”  
  
“I know,” Poe replied. “Listen, maybe I could take you out for a spin later?” He looked at Finn when he said it, and Finn opened his mouth to agree — of course — when Kele interrupted.  
  
“You know how to handle one of these things, Commander?”  Something about their tone made Finn frown. Poe looked up, though he remained crouching in front of Finn.  
  
“Is it hard?” he said.  
  
“There’s a technique to it,” Ludo rumbled.  
  
“Show me,” he said.  
  
So Poe and Finn got a brief tutorial on how to maneuver a wheelchair without dumping its occupant on the ground. Jess, Snap, and BB-8 watched closely, the droid occasionally offering algorithmic advice about velocity and recommended speed limits.  Kele did most of the explaining, while Ludo observed and occasionally barked, “Posture!”  Even the pilots straightened their backs.  
  
“And make sure he’s strapped in,” Kele added, gesturing to Finn’s torso. “His core muscles aren’t strong enough yet to support him yet.”  
  
“Thanks,” Finn muttered.  
  
Poe crouched in front of Finn’s chair once more, BB-8 hovering over his shoulder. “See you after dinner?”  
  
“You know where to find me,” Finn said.  
  
Poe grinned. “Great,” he said. “We can take a tour, see how much of this beautiful base you’ve been missing.”  
  
“Visitation is still only an hour, Commander,” Ludo said dryly.  
  
“You’d be surprised what I can do in an hour, sir,” Poe said, winking at Finn as he rose again.  
  
This made Snap and Jess laugh very loudly. Jess punched Poe’s shoulder, hard. “Stars, what a romantic you are,” she said. She didn’t sound especially serious.  
  
“Mm-hmm,” Kele muttered, as Poe, Jess, and Snap waved their goodbyes. BB-8 chirruped something that might have also been a goodbye, and then the little group were striding towards the stairs to tactical.  Finn watched them go.  
  
“You be careful with that lot, Finn,” Kele said as they turned Finn’s chair back to the med-wing.  
  
“Excuse me?” Finn asked.  
  
Ludo heaved a sigh as Kele said, “Pilots are heartbreakers, one and all.”  
  
“What does that even mean? They’re my friends,” Finn added, somewhat defensively.  
  
“Ha,” Kele said. “Dameron and his crew? Sure you can be friends with them, that’s easy.”  They wheeled through the second set of med-wing doors and into the hall towards Finn’s room.  
  
“What Kele is trying to tell you,” Ludo said after a moment. “Badly, I might add, especially since you did not solicit their advice, is that romantic encounters with the members of Black Squadron may prove ultimately unsatisfactory for at least half of those involved.”  
  
“Piss off, Ludo,” Kele growled. “I’m just trying to help.”  
  
Ludo turned on the lights in Finn’s room, and set out Finn’s second change of clothes. “That’s not helping,” he said.  “We will finish here so Finn can rest.”  
  
Finn, fascinated, didn’t say anything.

.  
  
Some of the pirated clips he used to watch with his squadmates, huddled over tablet screens in their bunks, were definitely of the romantic variety. Or sexual, at least. Finn had looked up the word “romance” once, during a terrible stretch of time in his teens when he and everyone around him were discovering urges and hormones and that even the best-trained bodies could be uncontrollably embarrassing sometimes. He’d looked up a lot of words, in fact, in the dictionary program installed on his tablet, the same model every Trooper was issued so he knew each keystroke he made was recorded, and the whole business had felt illicit. Technically there was nothing illegal about consulting a dictionary. But there was also no need to, no benign reason that could be easily explained as official business.  
  
Consulting a dictionary was still far easier than actually talking to someone, however. On other occasions when he’d had a question he couldn’t answer for himself, he directed it towards his Captain. She was always fair and, perhaps because he didn’t ask questions very often, always gave him clear and concise responses. But the thought of even mentioning sex to Phasma — the thought that she might know he and his squadmates masturbated in the freshers, for example — was enough to shrivel his penis and leave him cold. A neat trick, and one that had saved him from a few potentially mortifying situations, but it meant Finn was on his own in this particular department.  
  
So he had a pretty good idea that the clips his squadmates watched were pornography ( _“noun. explicit depiction of genitals and sexual acts for erotic stimulation, FORBIDDEN”_ ), not romance ( _“noun. feeling of excitement and stimulation associated with love; verb. to court, woo”_ ), and although the first was prohibited, both in the viewing, and making and distribution of, the other seemed about as probable an experience as friendship. The First Order didn’t need to forbid romance when its very existence was impossible.  
  
When Poe knocked on his doorframe later that evening, Finn arranged his features into whatever his face usually did when he saw Poe. Smile, smile back.  Troopers wore their helmets at all times apart from eating, bathing, and sleeping; Finn hadn’t realized how it was both easier and more terrifying to communicate when facial expressions came into play.  
  
Poe didn’t seem to notice. He peered around the room, spied the wheelchair tucked against the wall, and looked at Finn with a grin. “Ready to roll, buddy?”  
  
“Absolutely,” Finn said. He adjusted his bed to a sitting position, and then looked to where Poe stood waiting by the chair. “Ah. You’re gonna have to help me get into that.”  
  
“Oh!” Poe said, springing to Finn’s side. “Yeah sure! What works best, can you get up, should I pick you up? I think I can pick you up…”  
  
“Ludo picked me up earlier,” Finn said, trying to swing his legs around. His belly muscles were screaming. For an instant he considered canceling the outing, asking Poe to find BB-8 and they could watch some more shows together. Only for an instant, though.  
  
Poe gathered all of Finn’s tubes from their stand by the bed, and Finn held them in his lap. Then Poe, standing close, gently laid an arm across Finn’s back. He smelled not unpleasantly of engine oil and the kind of soap Finn himself used in his baths.  
  
“I — Can I touch your back?” he asked. “Will it hurt? I think I have to in order to pick you up but I don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
The little warm knot in Finn’s chest, the one that lit up whenever Poe was in the room, pulsed cozily. Finn smiled to himself — Poe really looked quite concerned — and then he turned that smile into a smirk.  
  
“I’d be more worried about hurting you,” he said, and watched Poe frown. “I mean, I’m a lot bigger than you are. I wouldn’t want you to strain your delicate pilot muscles here.” He gestured vaguely to Poe’s person, currently clad in fatigue trousers and a teeshirt, and checked Poe’s expression again, brow raised, smirk in place.  
  
Poe’s face was undergoing a rapid and fascinating transformation from concerned to confused to what Finn decided was mock-indignant, before he grinned as though he couldn’t help himself.  
  
“What!” he cried. “I’ll show you delicate pilot muscles, pal.” Poe looped one arm under Finn’s knees and the other around his back and hauled him up. It did hurt, but it was easier to laugh as Poe walked him the three paces across the room to set him down, somewhat awkwardly, in the wheelchair.  
  
“Let’s get you strapped in, Finn-buddy,” Poe said, as Finn adjusted his posture and handed his bags and tubes up to Poe. “Alright,” he said. “And away we go!”  
  
They visited the mess hall, largely because it was on the same level as the med-wing. “I didn’t realize how many stairs we had in here,” Poe remarked apologetically. “Wonder if it’d be worth the cost to install some ramps.”  
  
“I won’t be in a chair that long!” Finn said. Surely not.  
  
“Nah, but it’d be helpful for the droids,” Poe said. “Seriously, how didn’t I notice this before?”  
  
The mess was mostly deserted. Poe bought a bag of blandan chips and handed it to Finn. “Try one,” he said. “I’ll finish whatever you can’t eat.”  Finn was pretty sure Ludo and Kele would throw a fit if they knew Poe was tempting him with solid food — with junk food, no less. Finn had never heard of blandan chips but the packaging was bright yellow with round purple lettering and exclamation points, it didn’t take a genius to figure this out. He opened them anyway. Stars, they even smelled like junk food.  
  
Poe parked him at the end of a table and pulled up a chair. “Anyplace in particular you’d like to see?”  
  
Finn set the open bag of chips on the table. He hadn’t tasted one yet; he wanted to enjoy the full experience of eating solid food again, and of breaking a rule that was probably in place for a good reason. Tomorrow, very probably, would be hell. He picked up a chip.  
  
“I,” he said, studying the chip like it was a finely-wrought piece of engineering. “Am tired of being in my room. I have counted the cracks on the ceiling so often I accidentally memorized them. There are seventeen, or twenty-three, depending on how you count the splits.”  
  
Poe’s mouth looked like it wasn’t sure whether to gape or grin, but his eyes were bright. He rubbed his face with a hand. “Eat the damn chip, Finn.”  
  
“I might be allergic,” Finn pointed out. The chip was orangish and left greasy spots on his fingers. “I’ve never had a blandan before.”  
  
Poe was definitely smiling now, behind his hand. “It’s a starchy root vegetable, native to Tatooine and widely used in ration cubes. You’re probably not allergic.”  
  
Finn couldn’t keep his own grin hidden anymore. “Oh, well in that case,” he said, and popped the chip in his mouth. It made an extremely satisfying _crunch_ , and he closed his eyes as salty, greasy flavor exploded across his tongue. Chewing made it better: the flavor redoubled, the crunchiness continued, his senses flooded. He may have even groaned. “Oh,” he said again, softly. Finn swallowed, licked his lips and opened his eyes, prepared to see a world reborn.  
  
Across the mess, janitorial droids were stacking chairs and mopping the floor. The lighting unit near the entranceway fizzed and blinked. Someone walked out of the kitchen with arms full of brightly-colored snack packages.  Finn blew out a breath. “That was incredible,” he said, somewhat superfluously.  
  
Poe was staring. “Shit, if you do that for a chip I want to be here when they let you eat real food again.”  
  
Finn contemplated the remainder of the bag. Could he have another? He certainly wanted one, but he was also certain that no second chip could come close to the sensory revelation he’d just had. He pushed the bag towards Poe.  “You should finish these,” he said.  
  
“Are you kidding me?” Poe said, alarmed. “They’re practically holy now. You just had, like, a mouth-orgasm over one of these and now you want me to eat ‘em like they’re junk food?”  
  
“They are junk food,” Finn said. He knew what _orgasm_ meant, and while he thought that was a very apt description for his blandan chip experience, he needed a moment to savor the fact that the word “orgasm” had just come out of Poe’s mouth.  “I wouldn’t want them to go to waste,” he added.  
  
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand,” Poe muttered, but he grabbed a few chips and began crunching on them balefully.  After a moment he said, “They are pretty good. Been a while since I’ve had these.” He took a few more.  
  
“Eat them for me,” Finn said.  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” The chips were rapidly disappearing. Finn supposed that was kind of the point of junk food.  
  
They sat for a few minutes in companionable silence. “Got a question,” Finn said eventually.    
  
Poe was slowly twisting the now-empty chip bag into a knot. He looked up.  
  
“Have you ever had a romance?”  
  
“What?” Poe laughed. “Ah, sure? I’ve had what you might call some romantic moments, why do you ask?”  
  
Finn poked at the chip bag knot. Crumbs clung to the packaging and littered the tabletop. He was glad he’d stopped at one.  
  
“I haven’t,” he said. “Not yet.”  
  
“You’ve never had sex?” Poe sat back. He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table, the sort of restless habit that used to earn Finn an ear-boxing when he was an ensign.  
  
Finn folded his own hands on his lap. “Sex and romance aren’t the same thing, are they?”  He knew his dictionary wasn’t good at conveying the nuances between similar definitions, but surely it wasn’t that bad.  
  
Now Poe frowned, thinking. “I guess they’re not, really.” He gestured with one hand and then the other. “You can have romance without having sex, and stars know you can have sex without the romance — however you define that,” he added, “it’s different for everyone, but personally I like everything, all together.”  
  
“Have you had that? Everything, all together?”  
  
Poe smiled and looked away.  “Yeah, a couple of times.”  
  
Finn nodded. “That’s what I want. Someday.”  
  
Poe turned back, his mouth bowing into a crooked sort of grin. “Got anyone particular in mind?”  
  
Finn thought of Rey, of the way she’d smiled in her message to him, and how he’d like to touch the corners of that smile with careful fingers, or maybe with his lips.  And he looked at Poe, looking at him, saw the way Poe’s gaze had sharpened a little, noted the way Poe was leaning just a bit closer.  Finn felt his heart kick in his chest, and wondered if his flush was visible.  
  
He conjured up a smirk. “None of your business.”  
  
Poe laughed, looking utterly delighted. Finn took a breath, and then he laughed too. With that laughter in his voice, he said, “It’s just so nice to know it’s real, you know? Like really possible.”  
  
Poe’s grin dropped away. Finn blinked. Poe scraped back in his chair and stood, running a hand through his hair.  
  
“Well,” he said. “Wanna head on back, then? That hour’s probably up.” Stars, was he _blushing?_  
  
“No.”  Finn reached down to lock his wheels. “What just happened?” Poe was still standing, so Finn had to glower up at him. “Did me saying that make you sad? Or,” he guessed as cold washed through him, “mad?”  
  
Poe shoved his hands in his pockets. “Not mad,” he murmured. “Not even sad, really. I just — yeah. I’m being an idiot, sorry.”  
  
It was hard to argue with that, Finn thought as he studied Poe.  He wasn’t looking at Finn, but with such intention that Finn felt exposed anyway. Poe swallowed, his mouth twisting in a way that Finn thought looked very much like disgust. Self-disgust? His cheeks were still red.  
  
Finn reached over to lightly punch Poe’s arm.  “Don’t feel sorry for me, Poe Dameron,” he said. “I don’t need that.”  It was a guess, maybe a good one, but he hoped he was wrong.  
  
Poe nodded, eyes closed. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay. I’m sorry.”  
  
Finn watched him for a moment. At last Poe opened his eyes and looked at Finn. His expression, so recently filled with light, edged alarmingly towards bleak. If this was part of friendship too, Finn thought, it was a stupid part.  He reached to unlock his wheels.  
  
“I catch you doing that when I’m up walking, Dameron, I will kick your ass.”  
  
Finally Poe grinned, and if it didn’t quite reach his eyes, at least he was smiling again.

.  
  
Back in his room they faced the reverse problem of Finn-transferral.  
  
“Gravity is not in our favor this time,” Poe said. He studied Finn as if he was a robotics puzzle.  
  
“I can call for a nurse,” Finn said.  
  
“Nope,” Poe said, handing Finn his collection of tubing. “Ah. You still okay with me picking you up?”  
  
Finn was willing to ignore whatever had just happened in the mess if Poe was too. “Yes,” he said.  
   
So into Poe’s arms he went, for the span of one, two, three heartbeats, and then he was leaning back on the bed, stretching out his legs and shifting so Poe could pull the blanket up over him.  
  
Finn looked up at Poe looking down at him. He offered a smile.  “Thanks for the chip,” he said. “Maybe next time I’ll have two.”  
  
He felt more than heard Poe’s little laugh, his breath skating over Finn’s forehead. “Just wait til you have the dumplings here,” Poe said. “They’re some of the best I’ve had in four systems.” Finn nodded, made a small noise of agreement, but he was really preoccupied with the way Poe’s hair was curling along his temple, and busy resisting the urge to brush it away.  
  
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Poe said after a moment. “Want the lights off?”  
  
“Yeah.”  Finn twisted his fingers in his blanket. His whole body was tingling with pain, but somehow the line of Poe’s jaw, and the curving lines by his eyes, knowing that Poe was here and would still be here tomorrow, made it more bearable. This was friendship, surely.  
  
“Good night,” Poe said on his way out. “Sleep well, buddy.”  
  
“You too,” Finn murmured, but Poe was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A _blandan_ is entirely @Leupagus's invention, from her fic "To the Sky Without Wings."


	4. Chapter 4

  
  
Frenetic beeping yanked Finn out of a dream, making his back seize. Swearing, he fumbled in the dark for his tablet and pressed _[Download]_ before really knowing what was going on.  
  
Thirty seconds later, Rey’s face filled the screen.  
  
“Finn!” she cried. “I hope I didn’t wake you this time! I am so happy to hear from you. Your message came in this morning, but I had to go out with Luke first. He’s training me, or he says he is.” She made a face. “So far we’ve just been jogging around the island and catching a lot of fish. I know how to filet a fish now, at least? Luke said it was an essential Jedi survival tactic. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Fish tastes pretty good, though,” she added.  
  
“Tomorrow Chewbacca and Artoo are taking Luke’s ship for a supply run. It’s less conspicuous than the _Falcon_ , and still in good shape. They expect to be gone for about two or three weeks. After that …”  She managed, somehow, to meet Finn’s gaze. Her mouth bowed into half a smile.  “I think we go back. Back to the Resistance.”  
  
Finn calculated: If Chewie and the droid were gone for at least two weeks, and it took almost three to travel from Luke’s planet to D’Qar, then he had five weeks, maybe six, to learn how to walk again. He could do it.  
  
“This island, though,” Rey continued. “I can see why Luke came here, I really can. It is very lonely, but it feels good. That probably sounds absurd, but I don’t know how else to describe it.” She tapped her fingers to her chest.  “It feels, here — like it’s listening, almost. Like the stones and the grass and the ocean are all very wise, and listening.”  
  
Finn realized he’d pressed his own hand to his chest. He left it there, to feel his heart beating, as Rey continued.    
  
“It’s funny to me that the First Order believes Luke’s a terrorist. Maybe from their perspective he is. But he’s so quiet, Finn, even when he’s teaching he never raises his voice or loses his patience, even when I mess up and we have to catch more fish for dinner. Of course I hate messing up, but he never scolds me, just tells me to do it again.  Yesterday he said what he really learned from his old master was how not to teach a student. I think he was joking?  He doesn’t actually joke very often, though I did make him laugh this morning, quite on accident.”  Finn watched her smile again.  
  
“He reminds me of Leia, you know. Not personality-wise, not at all, but more like —” Rey frowned. “You said that Leia’s perceived as this cold, corrupt leader, and I’m glad I didn’t know that when I met her, because she felt so very good to me. I know you’re wondering if she’s lying, somehow; I wonder that all the time, with everyone I meet, but sometimes it’s nonsense.”  
  
Finn held his tablet closer even as Rey leaned toward the screen. “I need to believe that sometimes people won’t betray you,” she said. “Leia felt good, when I met her. Fundamentally good. Luke feels the same way, underneath his sadness. I suppose it makes sense, and Luke would say that’s the light I’m feeling, the light side of the Force moving through him. Only actually Luke wouldn’t say that because it would mean acknowledging that he’s not complete rubbish and at this point I think he’s still very much convinced he is. Rubbish, I mean.”  
  
She rolled her eyes, and then frowned again.  
  
“He did kill all those people, Finn. I asked him about that this morning. It happened when he blew up the Death Star. He said there were others, too, in later battles. It was decades ago and I don’t think he’s forgiven himself.  He said he could feel every single one of them die, through the Force, when they blew up the second Death Star.”  She shifted in her seat.  “I didn’t know what to say, but by the time I decided to say something, he’d gotten up and walked away.”  
  
For the first time, Finn realized that the stories he’d learned about Skywalker, and indeed all the figures of the Rebellion, never allowed that the real individuals behind them might be human, fully capable of regret, and grief, and despair.  
   
“You mentioned something about being blameless in this, how none of us is.  I thought about that today, and I’ve decided that I’m not trying to be blameless, I’m trying to do the right thing. If killing the people who were going to kill us — not only us but _entire systems_ — means I’m, I don’t know, tainted by this too, so be it.”  
  
Finn wasn’t sure that was what he’d been trying to say, but he couldn’t remember his original phrasing. Six weeks until they could talk in person. Six more weeks of five-minute transmissions in the middle of the night.  
  
“Maybe the only way to not be corrupted is to leave entirely,” Rey continued. “Luke didn’t say that’s why he left, but I think it’s one of his reasons. Yesterday he told me how much he’d come to love the sound of the sea, and of course I agreed, because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard, but after today …  
  
“Apparently the old Jedi Order preached non-attachment, not feeling any strong emotions about anything, somehow.  Those aren’t Luke’s words, that’s just what I remember. But they were still involved with,” Rey flapped a hand around her head, “everything. Which didn’t work very well, did it?”    
  
She blew strands of hair out of her face. “Luke would say it’s a matter of intention. ‘Consider the thoughts behind your actions,’” she said, affecting a ponderous tone of voice. “‘Search your feelings, before, during, and after.’”  She stuck out her tongue, suddenly cheeky again. “When I told him how far that rubbish would fly on Jakku, he just smiled. He smiled! And he said, ‘Well, Rey, you’re not on Jakku anymore.’”  
  
“Definitely exasperating,” Finn murmured.  
  
“Oh, and this morning he also said — Oh!” she cried, and hit the screen. “Time limit! Okay, okay.” She pushed both hands through her hair. “Ah, call me back soon, the messages come into the Falcon so you won’t wake me up. Are you making friends there? How are they? Say hi to BeeBee-Ate for me, and Poe too if you see him. Um. Keep exercising and healing and I know you’ll be walking again soon! Bye!”  
  
The screen blipped to solid blue. He immediately pressed _[Replay]_.  
  
Eventually, the low battery warning flashing, Finn set his tablet aside and lowered the bed. He didn’t need to remember his dream from earlier to know it was a bad one, crawling with the sensation of too much light and not enough air. Ironically, what sleep he’d gotten before Rey’s message left him without his usual coping mechanism: being too exhausted to waste time dreading the inevitable dreams that visited him each night.  
  
Several days ago, Dr. Kalonia had mentioned that if he ever wanted to talk about his experiences, they had a counselor on base. “Sometimes just talking to someone helps,” she’d said. With her steady gaze and dry tone, the remark felt less like a suggestion than it did an instruction, one she would follow up on if his dreams noticeably continued.  Finn, who’d grown up under the assessing gazes of First Order psych-techs, mentally formulated several convincing reasons why seeing the base’s counselor would not only be a waste of precious resources, but unnecessary, as his dreams were definitely nothing to be concerned about.  
  
He sighed, and carefully re-arranged his legs under the sheets. Someone in the room outside murmured to someone else; Finn counted their footsteps down the hall. He tried counting the steady beeping of monitors, too, from the various machines on the med-wing floor, but that proved more annoying than soothing. They never stopped.  At least his own monitors were off. At least the collection of tubing he’d acquired from his coma was gone now.  He’d wanted to set the catheter on fire but Kele wouldn’t let him.  
  
Rey, in her message, had seemed very clear on what “doing the right thing” entailed. For her it probably was clear. But here, in the semi-darkness of his little room, Finn remembered the shock of watching Slip die on Jakku, and realized with some discomfort that part of him still wished he’d shot Slip’s killer first.  
  
What would Rey say, if he told her that?  
  
His thoughts skipped over an awful vision of Rey’s disapproval and ran headlong into the memory of Poe’s smile. Finn closed his eyes. Poe would understand how it felt to go over and over an action not taken, and Poe wouldn’t pretend to listen while making little notes about Finn’s behavior for his records. Maybe he could talk to Poe.  
  
The resolution brought a little relief. Enough, even, that the persistent beeping from the monitors stopped being annoying, and Finn finally drifted back to sleep.  
  


.

 

Working with the wheelchair was painful enough that Finn actively contemplated taking the painkillers Kele kept offering him. “Shit,” he muttered, when sitting up, even with the bed behind him, was enormously difficult.  
  
“I told you you were gonna overdo it, kid,” Kele said helpfully when Finn’s therapy session began.  
  
“This will get worse before it gets better,” Ludo added.  
  
Finn bared his teeth at both of them. It was strangely relieving to know he could be surly — or exhausted, or delighted, or any kind of expressed emotion besides subordinate — in front of others here, and Ludo and Kele did not seem to mind him practicing.  “Thanks,” he said, sarcastically.  
  
They worked through it. Finn was soaked in sweat by the end of the session, because even the strength-training and stretching routines they’d been practicing for the past week were difficult today, and then Kele wanted him to push the chair to the end of the hall again.  This trip was less an exercise in independence and more a test of his pain tolerance, but Finn did it. His bath, afterwards, and the change of clean clothes, felt better than it ever had before.  
  
“Do you have any other patients here?” he asked as Ludo helped him back into bed.  
  
“Five others, currently, at various stages of recovery.”  
  
“You spend a lot of time with me.” He thought of resources and waste and General Organa’s offer. Was this effort worth it? Not for him, but for the base? The Resistance?  
  
“It’s relative,” Ludo said.  
  
“You’re the worst of ‘em,” Kele explained. “But pretty soon we’ll move your sessions to the gym, use the equipment there when we get you standing up.”  
  
“You think I’ll be standing soon?” His pain seemed to lessen dramatically.  
  
Kele cocked their head. “We’ll see how you do the next couple of days, but yeah, pretty soon.”  
  
Ludo considered Finn’s person as well, with a kind of bland assessment that reminded Finn uncomfortably of his old inspections. “Your muscle tone has made marked improvement since you woke,” he said finally. “I predict you’ll be able to support yourself within the next week, certainly.”  
  
“And then we’ll teach you how to walk again.” Kele jostled Finn’s slippered feet, and Finn wiggled his toes back. He gazed at the ceiling with its twenty-three cracks, feeling his body ache and twinge its way into relaxation.  
  
“Thank you,” he murmured. “I needed to hear that.”  
  
Kele patted his foot. “No problem, kid. Rest up, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
Finn waved a hand. “See you tomorrow.”

 

.

 

The following afternoon, Oona and Shivi knocked on the doorframe. “We have a surprise to show you,” Shivi said. She held out her arms. “But it means leaving the room.  We can always return tomorrow. Yes,” she added when Oona growled, “we can. Asking means letting people say no if they want. Finn may be too tired today.”  
  
Finn was tired today, but then “tired” seemed to be his new default setting. He scooted his legs off the bed. “I’d like to see your surprise.”  
  
Oona cheered and gestured for Finn to take his tablet, which he did, holding it bemusedly as Shivi helped him into the wheelchair.  
  
She pushed Finn through the corridors as Oona chattered happily alongside him, her paw resting on his arm. He noticed neither of them was wearing shoes, a fact that charmed him and made him wonder if anyone would comment, should he decide to go barefoot as well.  
  
Turning toward the barracks’ hallway, Finn could see a group of orange-clad figures clustered around a table in the mess, but instead of going through the open doors Oona capered to the right, into a little entranceway Finn hadn’t seen before.  
  
“Not many people use this facility,” Shivi murmured over Finn’s shoulder. “But Oona thought you should know about it.”  
  
She pushed his chair into a long room filled with rows of shelves and backlit by surprisingly large windows. There were tables and chairs, too, scattered with enough space between them to allow Shivi to maneuver Finn’s chair through. Tablets like his own were slotted neatly in a case near the door. The shelves, Finn saw, contained hundreds, maybe thousands, of program sticks, organized by subject and original language.  
  
“A library?” he whispered.  
  
Oona clapped her paws. “She says she knew you’d love it,” Shivi said.  
  
A bronze and green protocol droid bustled over, bowing. “Hello and welcome!” it said brightly. “I am the base librarian, designation XL-1BR, and I am happy to serve you!”  It proceeded to give an introduction that sounded both pre-recorded and buoyantly enthusiastic; maybe this place really didn’t receive many visitors.  
  
The droid explained that there were enough individual tablets here for almost everyone in the base to read at the same time, although Finn noticed most remained powered down in their docks. Finn was more than welcome, the librarian added, to sign out a tablet for his general use.  When he gestured to the tablet Poe had given him, the droid threw its arms in the air with a squeak. “Oh!” it exclaimed. “Recovered at last!”    
  
Poe wasn’t a big believer in signing out tablets, as it happened.  Finn dutifully recited his name and the tablet’s number for XL-1BR’s records.    
  
Oona and Shivi returned from a foray amid the shelves to dump handfuls of program sticks on the table near Finn.  
  
“Oh dear,” XL-1BR said.  
  
“A little bit of everything,” Shivi said. “To get you started. How many files can each tablet hold?”  
  
“Up to twenty-five,” the droid answered promptly. “However, it does depend on the size of the file. The unabridged translation of the Theed Cycle would easily fill half a standard tablet’s storage capacity. I recommend it, of course, but one must plan accordingly.”  
  
Finn was staring at the program sticks scattered over the tabletop. “Um,” he said eloquently. “This is really great, thank you for showing me.” Oona was hovering, and somehow Finn felt unable to start looking at the files, start _reading_ , while she and Shivi and the droid were all there.  
  
“Oona and I will return in an hour or two,” Shivi announced after a beat. She looked down at Finn. “Maybe two. Will you be okay here until then?”  
  
“Yes, thank you.” Finn made himself look up, away from the files, and he grinned at both of them. “Thank you,” he said again, meaning it.  
  


.

  
The library, especially in the late afternoon, was filled with light and reliable silence. The small windows of the med-wing necessitated bright white overhead lights, which thrummed softly and were never shut off. Even at three in the morning the hallway lights spilled into Finn’s room; even then he could hear the beeps and murmurs of monitors and medical droids.  
  
So Finn began spending several hours each afternoon under the big library windows, reading. XL-1BR nearly sparkled with glee over Finn’s consistent patronage, proving so cheerily helpful that Finn had to think of several polite ways of telling it to shut up. Still, the droid knew its library, and bustled about, joints squeaking, to fetch program sticks in whatever subject Finn wanted to explore that day.  
  
At first, Shivi came to collect him after two hours. Then, when it became apparent that two hours each day was not enough time, Kele started bringing him a bottle of his liquified dinner.  
  
“I remember when I used to read,” they remarked, looking around.  
  
“Why’d you stop?”  After only being allowed to read First Order-sanctioned materials, after having to smuggle in any other content, having free access to the wealth of this library was not a privilege Finn would voluntarily forego.  
  
Kele shrugged. “No time, I guess.”  
  
These long afternoons in the library became even more precious, and urgent. Presumably once he recovered, he would also be too busy to spend hours reading. He had so much to learn, so much information to absorb and assimilate before he could feel at all prepared to join the Resistance. To even make a decision about joining the Resistance. It wasn’t that he was uneducated; the lectures and lessons he’d attended in the First Order had been comprehensive and in depth. It was just that everything he learned before, there, must be weighed against everything there was to learn now, here. He checked out another tablet entirely to write down his thoughts, and began taking pages of notes.  
  
“Buddy, go to bed!” Poe found him the third night Finn remained in the library after 2200. “This’ll all be here tomorrow.  Hello, Libri,” he added to the droid.  
  
“You!” the librarian shouted, bolting from around its desk. “Thief!”  
  
Poe spread his hands in what was probably meant to be a placating gesture, but it was spoiled by BB-8 rolling to Poe’s defense and tooting angrily.  Finn rubbed his eyes and watched the little drama unfold.  
  
“How _dare_ you,” XL-1BR cried, either to BB-8 or Poe, Finn couldn’t tell. “I certainly will not tolerate tablet thieves in my library!”  
  
BB-8 menaced the librarian with shrieks and, alarmingly, its taser.  Poe tried to nudge it away with his foot. “BeeBee-Ate, Libri’s not wrong, I did take — borrow — a tablet.  But a _thief?_ Nah. Anyway you found it again, didn’t you?” He gestured to where Finn was sitting, tablet in question balanced on the table top.  
  
“It’s officially checked out now,” Finn said. “Thanks for helping me with that, Poe.”  Poe smiled winningly.  
  
“Really, Finn,” Libri huffed after a moment. “Spending time with this — this ruffian. I thought better of you.”  
  
“Even I am not immune to Poe’s charms.”  Finn watched Poe as he said this. Poe raised his brows and winked.  Finn’s cheeks warmed pleasantly.  
  
“Hey, I was heading back to my room, but I can walk you back to the med-wing if you want.” Poe strolled over to where Finn sat. Outside the big library windows, security lighting limned the crouching bodies of X-Wings in gold, and caught on the puddles collecting across the tarmac. It had begun to rain this morning, gentle and steady, and Finn had spent the better part of the afternoon staring out the windows, watching. Poe’s hair was still damp with it, curled tightly over his head. Finn let himself look for a moment longer than was really necessary. It had been a few days since he’d had the chance to do more than wave at Poe in passing.  
  
“Do you think I could see your room?”  
  
Poe’s eyes widened. “My room is a mess,” he said. “But sure, if you promise not to judge me.”  
  
“I never make promises I don’t know I can keep.” He tucked his tablets into the little stuff-sack Shivi had given him — “They’re standard issue,” she’d explained, anticipating Finn’s refusal, “and this one will fit over the back of your chair” — and threaded his way out of the library.  
  
“See you later, Libri,” Poe called. The droid made a very un-droid-like _harumph_.  
  
Poe walked alongside Finn while BB-8 caromed ahead down the barracks corridor. “I don’t actually spend a lot of time in my room,” he said. “So it tends to collect debris.”    
  
The corridor branched off at several points, and they turned down one of these. There were doors at regularly intervals, some cracked open with light and sound spilling out, most closed tight. Finn peered inside a few, and saw bunks, and lockers, and occasionally people. He recognized a few of them, and offered nods.  
  
“My place is near the east entrance,” Poe said after a few minutes. He sounded apologetic. “I can push you if you get tired…”  
  
“I’m good, thanks.”  He could have a bunk over here, once he was walking again. If he stayed. Somewhere over here Snap and Jess hosted their vid nights. Poe lived over here. Presumably Oona and Shivi did, too.    
  
He wanted to stay.  
  
“Commander?” a voice called as they passed. Poe paused as a door behind them swung open. A woman with white hair poked her head out. “I had a question — Oh.” She looked down at Finn, as he maneuvered his chair around. “Finn, right? Our miraculous survivor.”  
  
Her skin was darker than Poe’s, and she carried herself like someone who was only ever reluctantly impressed.  She did not look especially impressed now, but neither, Finn decided, did she look hostile. He stuck his hand out. “That’s me. I don’t know you, though.”  
  
She shook it. “Karé Kun. Your intel saved our asses last month. When you’re …” she gestured vaguely in his direction. “…Up again, come find me, I’ll buy you a drink. Commander, will you be available in thirty minutes? Pava and I want to talk about tomorrow.”  
  
“I’ll knock on your door,” Poe said.  
  
“Sure. See you around, Finn.”  Finn nodded back as she disappeared into her room, and let Poe help him turn the chair around again.  
  
“Do not,” Poe whispered, leaning over Finn’s shoulder as they walked away. “Under any circumstances, get into a drinking contest with Karé. She will destroy you.”  
  
Finn twisted around to whisper back, so he could imagine his lips against Poe’s cheek. “I take it you speak from experience.”  
  
This close, Poe’s grin was all lines and stubble and shining teeth. “Worst damn hangover I’ve ever had.” He ambled onward. “You still good?”  
  
Finn’s arms and torso were too-warm and singing, but it wasn’t bad yet. The hallway floor was smooth, and blissfully level, which helped. “I’m still good.”  
  
“Hey, I meant to tell you.” Poe gestured back toward Karé’s door. “We’re gonna be up and out for a few days, maybe longer. Just a little recon work, it’s pretty routine, but if you don’t see me around that’s why.”  
  
“Oh.” Finn stared down the prospect of a Poe-less week, and set his reaction aside to consider later. “Thanks for letting me know. I would have wondered.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m going to miss you too,” Poe said easily.  
  
They finally stopped near the end of the hall, and Poe punched a code into the keypad. “Remember,” he said. “You wanted to see this.”    
  
The door opened onto a sitting room/kitchenette, surprisingly bare given Poe’s warnings. Two doors faced the room about four paces away; Finn spotted a fresher and commode through the open one. A collection of mugs filled the sink, and packaging from both junk food and ration bars poked out of the disposal bin. BB-8 was already powered down in its charging dock along the far wall.  
  
“So here we are,” Poe said, shoving a small table and chairs aside so Finn could fit. “Seniority means suites, which would be great if I ever had time to relax. I mostly use the room for meetings, unfortunately.” He picked up some of the detritus from the floor and made an effort to fit it all in the bin.  
  
“My bed’s in there,” he added, pointing to the closed door. “I can show you if you really want but I’m pretty sure your chair won’t fit.”  
  
“Let’s see it,” Finn said. _Ah_ , he thought a moment later, nudging his chair forward. _There’s the mess._  
  
Poe pushed a hand through his hair and shrugged. “Maybe one day I’ll clean it up.”  
  
“When’s the last time you slept in there?” Untidiness was a punishable offense in the First Order; Finn rolled his chair even closer and peered inside. “Wow.”  
  
“Last night, and it’s not that bad.” Poe thrust his hands in his pockets. “Not really.”  
  
There were muddled heaps of clothing strewn over the floor, and the bed was a mess of bunched blankets and sheets. Clutter covered what might have been a desk, and spilled out of a wardrobe. A twisted, glinting shape lurking under the desk may have either been half an engine or the skeleton of an alien species, and the walls were adorned with posters, artwork indeterminate in the gloom, and more of the vine-scarring that covered the walls and ceilings generally across the base. A high window glowed with the ubiquitous orange-yellow of the security lighting. Finn wheeled himself backward. “That’s actually kind of impressive,” he decided. “I am impressed. I have never seen anything like that in my life.”  
  
Poe breathed out a laugh and gently shut the door. “Thank you, I think.” He leaned against the kitchenette counter, glanced down at the sink. “Ah, I’d offer you something to drink but…”  
  
“I’m good.” Finn watched as Poe stacked and re-stacked some of the dirty mugs until they stood in little towers on the countertop.  “It’s a nice room,” he offered. “Lots of space.”  
  
“Yeah,” Poe said. “I’m happy to have it, even if I’m hardly ever here. Speaking of which,” and all that nervous energy focused on Finn, who blinked. “You could probably get something like this, once you’re out of the med-wing. If you wanted.”    
  
A dozen reasons to say no leapt to Finn’s mind — he wasn’t high-ranking enough for a room like this; he couldn’t take a suite from another, more deserving person; he didn’t even know if he was staying, once he recovered — and he must’ve broadcast all of them in his expression, because Poe took one glance at his face and grinned.  
  
“I should clarify: there are a couple of two-bunk suites open at the moment.  They’re really small, but there’s actually more room per occupant than our eight and twelve-bunk dormers. There are also beds open in those rooms. That choice, two-bunk or twelve, could be up to you.”  
  
“Ah,” Finn said, relieved. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”  In truth, Finn’s new habit of dream-interrupted sleep, combined with late-night messages with Rey, rendered the prospect of sharing a room with strangers somewhat dreadful, but he didn’t really need to mention that right now.  
  
“Hey,” he said anyway, after a few moments of quiet, and fully aware that this was not the right time, not with him yawning and Poe late for what was undoubtedly a strategy session. “Can I talk to you about something?”  
  
Poe frowned and hunched forward, hands in his pockets. “Sure, what’s up?”  
  
Finn studied the overflowing rubbish bin, just to the right of Poe’s leg. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about, and I’d like to try putting it into words.”  
  
“Of course.” Poe crossed the room to sit in one of the chairs, and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.  “What’s going on?”  
  
“Well. Rey and I have been talking, with that program you gave me?” Poe nodded. “Right, so we’ve been talking about doing what’s right, and what that even means, like in the grand scheme of things, and that got me thinking about things I’ve done, and not done, and things wish I could’ve done, you know?”  
  
Poe nodded again, and Finn felt lighter for just having said this much. Talking to Poe was definitely a good idea. “Okay,” he said. “Hear me out.”  
  
And he told the story of the landing on Jakku as he hadn’t told it to anyone else, even the General. He described the fear in his belly as the transport touched down, and how he looked for Slip because Slip was always falling behind. Sure, Slip wasn’t anything like the friend he had in Poe, or Rey, or Shivi or Oona, but that didn’t mean Finn cared nothing for him. He related where he was when he saw Slip fall, and tried to put into words the horror he’d felt when, back on the _Finalizer_ , he had taken off his helmet and found it smeared with Slip’s blood. He went over what Rey had said in her message, made an effort to remember her exact words because hearing them had made him wonder if she’d ever understand. Finn looked at Poe when he told him how he felt that Poe would understand, and it seemed Poe’s expression, and his quiet attentiveness, confirmed this.  
  
“The thing is,” Finn said, glancing down at his hands as he came to the heart of it. “I know it wouldn’t change anything. Maybe it would make things worse. Maybe it would make _me_ worse, I don’t know. But there’s a part of me that still wishes I’d killed whoever shot Slip. Whoever they were.”  
  
After a long moment, Poe sat back and pushed a hand through his hair. “Well, buddy. Finn. Now’s your chance.”  
  
Finn stared into Poe’s face, noting, without really meaning to, the way weariness and resignation, and sadness too, had collected in the tension of Poe’s jaw, the lines on his forehead, and most of all in his eyes.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Poe murmured. “But the way you described everything …”  
  
“I think,” Finn said, after several minutes filled with neither of them saying anything, “I’d better go now.”  
  
“Sure.” Poe got to his feet. “Yeah, sure. Wait — can you — don’t you need someone to help you —” He glanced from Finn’s chair to his face and back to his chair again.  
  
“I’ll ask Shivi if I need to.”  
  
“Okay. Ah. Sure. I guess I’ll see you in a few days?”  
  
Finn unlocked his wheels, and then looked at Poe. “Please don’t die.”  
  
Poe scrubbed the heel of his hand under his eyes. “I’ll do my best, buddy,” he said, opening the door. “See you later.”  
  
.

  
Poe and his squad were gone by the time Finn woke the next morning. Shivi told him, as she helped him into his chair after his drinkable breakfast. Finn nodded up at her, saw the way she frowned like there was something on his face, but all she said was, “I'll see you in a few hours.”  
  
Sometimes, before, Finn would spend his rest periods hunkered in his bunk, reading encyclopedia entries on his Trooper issue tablet until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. It didn’t really matter what he read; it was enough that the sequences of names and explanations remained in their orderly, alphabetical rows on his screen. It was enough to scroll through the entries, reading one after another, and feel himself start to relax. By the time he’d defected, Finn was well into his fourth re-read of the encyclopedia program.  
  
Libri was squeaking between the shelves, on a mission to fetch Finn more news articles from the Clone Wars, when someone knocked on the door. He glanced up, and watched with some apprehension as the visitor closed the door and ordered the droid to power down.  
  
“I do like this place,” General Organa said, looking around. “I never spend enough time here, but I’m glad we have it.”  
  
Finn glanced around as well, and then held up his tablet. “I’ve been reading, sir,” he began. Something about the General made Finn want her approval, want to earn it. The feeling was both like, and utterly unlike, how he used to feel around Captain Phasma. “Everything I can. Especially about the Republic.”  
  
“And how does our collection compare with what you learned, growing up?” She was wearing deep blues today, and as she joined Finn at the table he could see the pins in her hair, keeping her braids in place.  
  
His old tablet’s entry on the Republic had been short, shorter even than its entry on Star Destroyers, but the lectures and speeches he’d attended over the years more than made up for any brevity on behalf of the encyclopedia’s authors. “It is much more complicated than what I learned in the First Order, sir,” he said.  
  
She huffed a laugh. “I’ll bet. Our history is nothing if not complicated.”  
  
“It’s more believable too,” he went on. “I mean, it is so messy, and it seems like there are fifty different sides to every problem, and some of them directly contradict one another, like I can practically hear them all arguing, so I know this can’t be —” He cut himself off before he could say, _made up_. “It has to be real. If that makes sense. Sir.”  
  
“That makes sense,” she said, the smile still dancing in her eyes. “And what will you learn about when you’ve read all we have on the Republic?”  
  
Finn stared out the window. There were over three thousand files in this library on the Republic, the New Republic, and the Resistance, and he had indeed intended to view them all.  
  
But she didn’t seem inclined to scoff at his plans. “Well, okay, I’ve been thinking about this,” he began. “I have three hours in the morning now, before my therapy session, which I didn’t used to have because of the gel routine but — never mind; anyway, I have more free time after my session every afternoon, and lately Kele’s been bringing me dinner here so I just stay until I need to sleep.  
  
“Obviously I have a lot of catching up to do. I also need to learn Binary. And Ewokese. And probably Togruti too, since Shivi’s always translating for me. So if I do history in the mornings and languages in the evenings, and learn to walk again for the rest of the time, then soon I’ll be good for something...”  
  
He hadn’t planned to say the last part out loud. The General had been smiling as he spoke, but she sobered at this, and placed her hands on the table. Her fingers reached toward his own.  
  
“Finn,” she said. “You may sit in here and read tablets for the rest of your life and need never doubt that you’re good for something. I know this can’t be easy for you, but you are allowed to take the time that you need, to heal and to figure out what you’d like to do. It’s up to you — I will not give you orders, not unless and until you decide to serve under me. And if you don’t, that is fine. We’ll set you up and send you on your way, wherever you want to go.”  
  
There was a silence, the sort that stretched between words spoken and thoughts spinning, until finally Finn said, “Thank you, sir,” and then only because he didn’t know what else to say.  
  
But another thought bubbled up, and since he was apparently confessing everything to Leia Organa today, he looked up again. “I’m grateful for your offer, the promotion, trust me I am, but.” He made himself meet her gaze. “Sir. I don’t want to have to kill anyone again.”  
  
She nodded. He paused and then added, “I will if it means saving someone else’s life. Maybe if it means saving myself. But I don’t want to be ordered to do that anymore, even to shoot Stormtroopers, even for the Resistance. I can’t be your corporal, General.”  
  
There was another pause, but he was done. The General shifted back in her chair and studied him. “Your records say you’ve been trained as a field medic.”  
  
Finn wanted to ask how she’d obtained his records, but he didn’t actually want to know the answer. His records also noted his exemplary marksmanship and ability in hand-to-hand combat, and he appreciated that she hadn’t mentioned this. Would it be a waste, to set all those skills aside? Or would new skills, a skill for healing, a skill for learning languages, make it up? Finn supposed there was really only one way to find out.  
  
“I can keep my head in a combat situation, sir,” he said. “And yes, I think I would appreciate saving lives better than ending them.”  
  
“It’s gruesome work,” she said.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Some would say it’s easier to fire a blaster at a dozen paces than pick up the pieces afterwards.”  
  
“That’s what frightens me, sir,” Finn said.  
  
She nodded slowly. Throughout this conversation her gaze had never wavered. Finn wondered, not for the first time, what she saw in him. “Alright,” she said at last. “You’re friends with Shivi? I’ll talk to her about formally training you. Reckon you can fit a couple hours of that in your schedule? Starting, say, a week from today?”  
  
Finn reeled, thinking through the implications and potential directions as fast as he could. It wasn’t fast enough, there was too much to process, but he said, “Yes, yes absolutely,” anyway.  A medic was never useless.  
  
“Good,” the General said. Then she looked around the room once more, and rose. “I’ve kept you from your reading long enough. Look, once you’re on your feet again you can visit me in my office, but until then if you’d like to talk, just tell this one here.” She gestured to Libri, and then ordered it to power on.  
  
“Keep learning, Finn,” she said on her way out. “And I’ll see you later.”  
  
Finn rocked in his seat, and found the prospect of reading news articles about the Clone Wars wasn’t quite as diverting as it had seemed an hour ago. He asked the droid for anything and everything on field medicine, instead.


	5. Chapter 5

  
  
“What do you mean, I don’t have to drink this stuff anymore?” Finn regarded his tall cup of liquid, dust-colored dinner, arrested by something Kele had just said.  It was the day after Poe’s departure, and Finn was tireder than usual for some reason. He’d spent the afternoon in bed, alternately reading and drifting in and out of fitful sleep.  
  
Kele’s smile was sharp around the edges. “Hey!” They spread their hands. “It’s a nutritionally balanced meal, far better for you than the slop you’ll get in the mess. I thought you liked it.”  
  
Finn narrowed his eyes. Throwing the cup at Kele’s head was not an option. Someone would have to clean it up, someone other than him, because no one was going to allow Finn to scrub floors yet.  He set it on the table. “How long,” he said carefully, “have I been missing out on solid food?”  
  
Kele rocked back on their heels, then bounced from hip to hip. “Week and a half. Give or take a few days.”  
  
Finn groaned, extra loudly because he _wasn’t_ throwing a tantrum, he was _not_ soaking Kele’s smug face with liquified rations or hurling his pillow across the room, but he _wanted_ to.  Shivi poked her head in. “Is everything all right?”  
  
“Take me to the mess!” Finn ordered. He scooted off the bed, oozing his way into the wheelchair. “I want vegetables! I want junk food! I want things that go crunch!”  The chair got stuck on a bed corner as Finn tried to heave himself toward the door.  Kele freed him with a tug.  
  
“What’s on the menu? I’ll take one of everything I don’t have to drink.”  
  
Shivi looked amused. “I believe tonight they’re serving roast rugger and lake-fruit.”  
  
“Animal protein?” Finn gaped. “ _Real_ animal protein? You never told me I could get that here!”  
  
“Oh kid,” Kele said, strolling alongside Shivi as Finn heaved himself down the hallway. “Been friends with a Togruta for how long and you didn’t think we served meat on this base?”  
  
In the mess a few minutes later, Shivi filled a plate with samples of the foods simmering on warming trays outside the kitchen while Finn drifted behind. Everything looked amazing. Everything smelled amazing. He was going to eat real food again and it was going to be spectacular.  
  
He tried very hard not to think of Poe.  
  
“You can give me more than that,” he called up to Shivi. A kitchen droid hovered, poking a temperature gauge into a steaming tray of cubed reddish tubers. Shivi had selected just one small lump for Finn’s plate. “I’m really hungry.”  
  
“Of that, I’m certain.” Shivi smiled. “But it would be easy for you to over-eat, so starting slowly is better for now.”  
  
His plate still looked woefully empty by the time Shivi held a small card under the droid’s scanner. “Even now you deny me food,” he grumbled.  
  
“Better this than vomiting it all up in half an hour,” Kele remarked. “Don’t worry, by next week you’ll be eating close to whatever you ate before.”  
  
What Finn ate before was primarily ration kits and nearly-tasteless carbo-protein cubes, except for a few glorious trips to sympathetic establishments planet-side. The idea of having hot food every day, several times a day, was dizzying. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, instead.  
  
  
.  
  
  
“Surely all this isn’t free.”  His plate clean, Finn watched Shivi and Kele finish their own dinners. Everything he’d put in his mouth had tasted incredible. The rugger was covered in a sweet-spicy sauce that made Finn’s eyes water — you were lucky if you found a ration kit that included extra salt packets; spices were unheard of for Troopers — while the red tuber was seasoned with something that bloomed over his tongue like a damn flower, and the lake-fruit’s crunchiness made it a joy to eat. There were also broad legumes that squished very pleasantly in his mouth, and bright, crisp leaves that had obviously been chilled and tasted like he remembered forests smelling.  His belly rumbled uncertainly, and while there was no way he’d admit out loud that Kele and Shivi were right about his portion sizes, Finn was glad he didn’t have more food to eat. Because he would’ve eaten it. And then he might’ve really been sick.  
  
“Not quite free, no.” Shivi held up the card again. “Everyone stationed here receives one of these, and a small stipend. While the cards are only good for purchases on-base, the credits we earn can be transferred anywhere. If you like, we can set up your account tomorrow.”  
  
Kele dug out their own card. “You use it anytime you need something here, from dinner to skivvies.” The card looked exactly the same as Shivi’s: small, blue, with a chip on one end.  
  
“I didn’t need a card to check out the tablets from the library,” Finn pointed out.  
  
“Yeah, well, that droid’s got its own system. We’re talking about supplies and food and stuff. It’s this scheme the quartermaster’s people devised, and at first I was skeptical but it works fairly well. There’s always enough food, at least.”  
  
Finn considered the cards, the roast rugger scraps left on Shivi’s plate, and the large, steaming pans still out at the front of the mess. “I don’t mean to sound critical,” he said slowly. “But how exactly is all of this financed? And why?”  
  
There was a beat. Shivi opened her mouth, but then Kele shoved back from the table. “Different priorities,” they muttered. “We have _different priorities_ around here. Guess what? If you have well-fed troops, making enough to set a little aside at the end of the day, you don’t need fancy tech and shiny ships to keep ‘em hanging around.”  They gathered the plates and cutlery and stalked off to the kitchen.  
  
Finn stared after them. “I said something wrong.”  
  
“No, Finn, you asked a reasonable question.” Shivi glanced up as a light above them began to flicker. “Kele … They were not, I believe, talking to you or me just now.”  She paused. “This is not my story to tell, but I will say that Kele’s family did not understand why they joined the Resistance. I do not know that they’ve communicated since.”  
  
“Oh.”  Finn’s feelings about Kele underwent a rather rapid readjustment. Was it worse, he wondered suddenly, to leave behind those you loved for a cause, or to discover that those you loved only loved you back if you stayed with them? “That’s awful.”  
  
“Everyone comes here bearing something.  But regarding your question,” she continued. “Our accountants, both human and droid, are extremely good at what they do. There is very little that is wasted.”  
  
This wasn’t really an answer, but Finn took the hint. He’d try asking Libri about it later.  
  
Kele waved on their way back through the mess. “See you two tomorrow!” Then they all but ran out the doors. Finn tapped his fingers across the tabletop, frowning.  
  
“Ludo will take care of them, don’t worry.”  
  
He glanced at Shivi. “You caught me.”  
  
She nodded. “Your features are very expressive.”  
  
It was a struggle not to sigh. “Two decades spent wearing a helmet, and now everyone can read me like a damn holo.” He took a few extra moments to unlock his wheels and roll back from the table.  
  
Shivi smiled. “You are not so transparent. Remember that I am better than most at reading others’ expressions, especially humans.”  
  
“Oh.” Some Togruta thing, maybe. He’d ask Libri about that, too. “Well, since I’m not going into covert ops I guess it’s fine.”  
  
“In fact, it will serve you very well as a medic,” Shivi said, as they made their way back to the med-wing. “Which reminds me. Why aren’t you taking your painkillers?”  
  
Finn looked up to see her watching him, the curves of her montrals gleaming under the hallway lights.  “I don’t need them,” he said.  “I took them at the beginning, but I don’t need them anymore.”  
  
It was true he’d been hooked up to a drip at the beginning, but she didn’t point that out. “I’ve been in worse pain,” he added. “It’s okay.”  
  
Shivi regarded him, brow raised. Then she nodded. “I only wanted to ask. Dr. Kalonia mentioned that you never filled the prescription she gave you last week.”  
  
Finn opened his mouth to say he had no intention of filling it, and then closed it again. If Kalonia talked to Shivi about him, could he be certain Shivi wouldn’t report back with whatever he said?  “I’d forgotten about it,” he said instead. It wasn’t precisely a lie. “I’ll fill it tomorrow.”  
  
Shivi nodded. “Excellent. I’ll be taking inventory tomorrow morning, you can have your first lesson at the same time.”  
  
They arrived at Finn’s door, and he peered inside. Soon he’d be able to walk out of this gloomy little place. “I’d like that, yeah.”  
  
“Anyway,” he continued in a message to Rey, later that night. “That’s what I told her. I’m not going to take them, though. They make me lethargic and I can’t afford to be slowed down right now. I really am in way less pain than I was even a week ago.”  He didn’t mention that it still hurt to sneeze.  
  
“Dr. Kalonia explained that the new muscles and nerves in my back will take a few months to fully integrate with my body, which, okay. A couple more months of this, getting better every day. I can do it.” He shrugged carefully, and half-grinned at the camera.  
  
“You know, a couple of times I’ve caught myself thinking about my old body and my new one, like how much more reliable the old one was. It’s so weird; I’m in the same body I was in before, just … modified.”  
  
He yawned. “Scuse me. Oh, but guess what? I had real food today! Kele made some joke about how much I looked forward to those liquid meals I told you about, only the way they said it, like with this head shake thing” — Finn tried to imitate the exact angle of Kele’s chin — “I knew something was up. I’m getting better at reading people’s expressions, at least?  
  
“But, stars Rey, the food they have here!” He patted his belly. “You would appreciate it. Or maybe you already have, how long did you stay here before going off to find Skywalker? So maybe you know what I mean, but…”  He proceeded to give Rey descriptions and opinions of everything he’d eaten for dinner. She was the only person he knew who’d understand, and the only person who’d be as incredulous as he was by the way some of the others here on base scoffed at the mess’s offerings.  
  
“The best part,” he concluded, “is that I can go back tomorrow. I wonder if the Resistance has ever recruited on the basis of their food alone?”  
  
  
.  
  
  
  
“How did you get into medicine?”  
  
He and Shivi were in the med-wing’s supply room, where Finn was learning to assemble the medical kits every Resistance ship kept onboard. The kits for X-Wings were understandably smaller than those for transport vessels; now he knew that Poe and his squad were carrying energy boosters, basic painkiller patches, and several varieties of prophylactic.    
  
Shivi slid him a glance. “You mean, instead of becoming a bloodthirsty warrior?”  
  
“Um.” Had she read the First Order’s propaganda about Togrutas? Or was this a more widely-accepted idea than he’d realized? “Not — surely that’s — erm.”  
  
“We are not all like the stories they tell about us, Finn.” She smiled, giving an impressive view of her teeth. “But, my great auntie was a Jedi. I grew up learning about her, and so I grew up learning that there was more than one way to be Togruta. Plus, I am good at it.”  
  
“Medicine?”  
  
“Healing. I have…” She waved a hand. “A certain feeling for it. As though my hands know what to do, as long as I remember to trust them.” She began cross-checking items in the kits with a list on her tablet.  
  
“Do you think,” Finn said after a moment, “that this feeling is innate?”  
  
“I am not sure,” she said slowly. “It is not something native to my people, I know that. But I have never had to make the choices you’ve faced, and I already know you are skilled at trusting your feelings. So I would say, not necessarily.”  
  
They worked in silence for the next quarter hour. The assembled kits were stacked neatly on shelves by the door, while Finn carefully checked and resupplied old kits, pulling out empty, crumpled packaging and stuffing replacements into their appropriate pockets. Any unsealed tools or syringes he discarded into a bin for re-sterilization; medications less than two months away from their expiration dates he set aside for use in the med-wing itself.  
  
At last he sat back. Looking around the room, he noted shelves containing everything from bandages to breast milk formula. Stainless steel coolers lined the far wall, many of which required passcodes to access. He’d already spied the lab through a windowed door across the hall.  
  
“Why doesn’t this base have a bacta tank?”  
  
Shivi kept her eyes on her tablet. “Until very recently, anyone so injured as to require bacta immersion was transported to the New Republic’s facilities for recovery.”  
  
“…Shit.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
Finn flicked his gaze to the little rounded corner of a med-kit pouch where it met the table top, stared hard at it. Somewhere behind him, in the hall, two monitors beeped in sync for the space of one, two, three heartbeats. The edge of his chair’s wheel grip was cool, and he ran a hand along it, back and forth. Tiny pieces of grit scraped the calluses on his fingers. He dug a thumbnail into his palm until it hurt. Shivi set down her tablet.  
  
“Shivi,” he said. There was a stain on the edge of the pouch. Booster residue? Grease? Blood?  
  
She watched him.  
  
“Is it normal to think about that — or how you said your auntie was a Jedi and I still can’t believe they’re real, or how my friend probably hates himself right now because he killed someone I knew, while my other friend is so far away it takes a whole kriffing day of waiting just to have a conversation with her, and now you tell me the technology I helped build, the place I came from, destroyed — ”  
  
He buried his face in his hands, clenched them into fists so he could speak.  “Why does knowing that make it worse? Wasn’t it horrible enough already? Why do I want to smash something? Tell me this is normal. Just tell me I’m not crazy right now.”  
  
“Finn.”  Very gently, she grasped his fists and lowered them, holding on until he relaxed and opened his eyes. She was kneeling before him, and her expression was lined with sadness.  “I cannot tell you that it is normal, because you should not have to bear such grief. But you have found yourself in good company. As I said, each of us here is carrying something.” She smoothed her thumbs over the backs of his hands.  
  
He took a breath, and then another.  
  
“So we’re all crazy, is what you’re saying.”  It was a bad joke, but she smiled for him.  
  
“This afternoon,” she said, standing again, “I will show you what I do when I want to smash something.”  
  
“I’d like that.”  
  
Which was how, several hours later, Finn found himself outside for the first time in over a month, watching Shivi and Oona stack little bricks on a dock over the lakeshore. They’d run into Oona over lunch, and she was clearly on board with whatever Shivi had planned, as she’d driven the cart of bricks out to the dock herself.  
  
It was wonderful to be outside again. The sun was hot and bright and sparkled over the water so that Finn had to squint to see. He could already feel himself sticking to his chair, despite the steady breeze. The lake was sizable, maybe a thousand meters from where Finn sat to the other side, and lined with enormous-looking trees.  He took a deep breath, smelling damp places and growing things. The air seemed more alive, somehow, than the recycled air of a star destroyer, or even the air of the med-wing. He grinned.  
  
Shivi caught his expression and smiled back.  “They stocked this lake with fish so we wouldn’t decimate the local wildlife, but the lake itself is poor in nutrients.”  Her grin turned mischievous. “So once a week we feed the fish.”  
  
She hefted a brick. “These are made from dehydrated food scraps from the kitchens. Watch.”  Then, with an unholy yell that made Finn’s hair stand on end, Shivi pitched the brick far over the water. It landed with an enormous splash.  Almost instantly the water roiled to life, churning with flippers, fins and tails, gaping pink mouths and flat discs the size of his fist. Eyes, Finn realized with some alarm. Oona shrieked and threw another brick in a different direction. Again, the water became a riotous mass of splashes and scales.  
  
“…Wow.  Ah. How big are these fish?” The dock’s edge, a good two meters in front of where he’d parked his chair, suddenly seemed rather too close.  
  
Oona spread her arms, then stepped to the side and spread her arms again.  
  
“Big enough,” Shivi said, “that two can feed everyone on the base dinner, with enough left for soup the next day.”  
  
“But then you feed their remains back to them?”  He thought of the fish steak he’d enjoyed last night and felt a little sick.  
  
“They eat everything we don’t,” she shrugged. “On their home world, they regularly eat the weaker members of their schools.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
“They are even less intelligent than ruggers, if that helps,” she added, before hurling another brick into the lake.  Yelling seemed to be part of the deal; both she and Oona let loose some truly bloodcurdling screams with each throw, which made Finn want to cover his ears.  Stormtroopers never yelled.  
  
Shivi’s words from earlier came back to him.  Maybe this was less about feeding the fish — surely a droid could do that — and more a means of finding release. “Okay, give me one of those,” he said. “My turn.”  
  
The bricks weren’t very heavy, though Finn didn’t examine them too closely. Pitching underhand worked better from his chair, and the higher he tossed a brick, the bigger the splash it made.  But the yelling part was hard. Oona gave several enthusiastic demonstrations, and her shrieks were loud enough to cover his flimsy attempts, until he finally decided that half-assed yelling was just embarrassing. With his next pitch, Finn roared.  
  
“Wow, that does feel good,” he said, as Oona cheered.  Shivi handed him another brick, and the three of them let loose volley after volley of bricks into the churning lake water. Finn hollered and laughed and hollered again, and felt lighter than he had in days.  It didn’t answer his questions from before.  But the pressing weight of them, the crisis of not knowing those answers, had, for the moment, disappeared.  
  
By the time they finished, Finn’s chest and shoulders were aching and he was looking forward to a second bath. Oona taught him the words for ‘water,’ ‘lake,’ ‘fish,’ and ‘food’ in Ewokese — or, as Shivi explained for her, the word for ‘food’ when it was meant for animals, which was different than ‘food’ intended for friends, family, and oneself.  
  
“Eating is very important in my culture,” Oona said through Shivi. “And we take care of those unable to hunt and harvest for themselves.” She patted his knee.  
  
“That’s why you helped me get lunch earlier,” Finn said.  She beamed, and nodded.  
  
“What’s the word for thank you, again?”    
  
She only had to say it once, this time.  
  
  
.  
  
  
Rey’s reply arrived just as he was facing down another night of dreams. His unburdened mood had faded with the sun, leaving him feeling tender and hollow. Why was it that everything seemed harder after dark?  
  
“Finn,” Rey hissed. “You can’t recover if you’re not sleeping either! I did the math, I figured out what time you’re calling me, and you are not sleeping. I don’t know why I’m surprised.” Her blue-tinted features were contorted with exasperation. “Stubborn as a happabore, of _course_ you won’t take your painkillers, you were only _sliced with a lightsaber_ , it’s fine!”  
  
Finn always wished Rey was back, but there were moments when her absence was a kind of pain in itself. He burrowed his fingers in his hair as she continued. “Of course I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better, but did you have to tell me about the food on base? You know I am eating fish and seaweed every day, don’t you? It has lost its novelty, I promise.”  
  
There was a thump from beyond the camera, and Rey stuck out her tongue. “You’d think,” she said loudly, “that for two people who grew up eating the same food every day, Luke and I would agree that the seaweed is boring, but no, he insists it’s delicious.”  But her expression was fond, and her voice softened as she went on to explain that Luke was currently fiddling with the _Falcon_ ’s old hologame table. “He was trying to beat the game, but the rules change every round. The latest theory is that Chewie messed with the programming so only he can actually win.”  
  
Finn twisted to his side in his hospital bed, curled around the image of Rey as she’d been twelve hours ago, and felt suddenly, irrepressibly lonely. As she spoke, describing her day, her teachings with Luke, and her plans to reinvigorate some of the Falcon’s older modifications, Finn traced his finger over the screen, following the sweep of her hair and the line of her jaw.  When the message ended, he replayed it, again and again. It was a very long time before he fell asleep.  
  
  
.  
  


  
Days passed without word from Poe’s squad. Finn told himself that this was normal, that if anything dire happened someone would surely let him know, and that if he really wanted information he could always go to the General.  He didn’t want to go to the General.  So he tried to focus on getting stronger, and better.  If he kept himself busy, he wouldn’t have the energy to worry.  
  
The day after his re-introduction to the wonders of solid food, Ludo and Kele moved Finn’s therapy sessions to the base’s gym, an area one level down from the med-wing and accessible, fortunately, by ramp. There, they began incorporating various pieces of equipment into Finn’s strength training. Most of it was familiar — a treadmill was a treadmill no matter where you were in the galaxy — but Finn couldn’t help but notice that none of it matched the First Order’s caliber in make and model.  On the other hand, he certainly hadn’t been paid to be a Stormtrooper. _Different priorities._ All of the equipment, while shabby looking, functioned well enough.  
  
On the first morning, as Ludo showed him how to do curls using some of the lightest weights available, Finn resolutely refused to think about how many reps he used to do, with weights five times as heavy.  
  
“You can only get better from here, kid,” Kele said, watching him.  
  
“Great,” Finn ground out, and Kele grinned.  
  
He also took his first steps down in that gym, between two parallel bars and with Ludo and Kele on either side, guiding him. Oona, who’d taken to watching Finn’s sessions when she had the time, erupted into high-pitched cheers that made Kele flinch and Ludo smile. Finn gritted his teeth. It wasn’t hope that filled him as he took one shuffling, heavy step after another, but a solid, almost angry kind of determination. He was going to do it. He was going to be walking again by the time Rey returned. Hell, at this rate maybe even by the time Poe returned. And then, when they left again — because he knew these dear friends he’d made would always be leaving — this time, he’d be able to go, too.  
  
  
.  
  
  
Finn spent the rest of his waking hours reading in the library, assisting Shivi in the med-wing as she attended to various patients, and learning Ewokese and basic droid maintenance from Oona. By the time he hauled himself back into bed each night, sheer exhaustion dragged him down into a sleep so deep Finn didn’t wake until morning.  He supposed he ought to tell Rey.  
  
Late one evening, he, Oona and Shivi lingered in the mess, the crumbs of their dinner littered on trays they’d pushed aside. Oona was typing transliterated phrases into his tablet, and though Shivi said his pronunciation needed work, Oona beamed as Finn worked his way through, “The golden droid is talking too much. Please give him an oil bath.”  
  
“Do people really say stuff like this?” he asked after his third effort. Ewokese vowels were proving especially difficult; the subtle intonations were nothing like Basic speech and Finn’s throat was weirdly achey.  
  
Oona nodded. She could actually understand Basic fairly well, but it was an extremely difficult language for an Ewok to speak. She replied slowly, but while there were a few words that sounded half-familiar, none of it made sense yet. Finn sighed.  
  
“She said these phrases are based on real conversations she’s had,” Shivi supplied.  
  
“Wow. Okay, I’ll try again.”  At least the language’s grammatical structure was consistent.  
  
Suddenly, there was a roar overhead. Then another, and another.  Finn, Shivi and Oona met each other’s gazes, tense, as an alarm sounded. A voice over an intercom blatted a series of numbers that meant nothing to Finn, but his friends both relaxed.  
  
“Black Squadron has returned,” Shivi said. “At least two wounded. I’ll be needed.”  She pushed back her chair, rose. Others in the mess were doing the same. Some were running.  
  
“They didn’t say who? Who’s wounded?” Finn unlocked his wheels and rolled after her.  “Can you get me outside?”  
  
Oona batted her ear, the Ewok equivalent of a head shake, and trotted ahead to join Shivi. The alarm was blaring again. _Run_ , it cried. _Run, run, run_. Finn bit back a groan and did his best to weave between scattered tables and chairs.  One day. One day soon…  His wheel caught on a chair leg, and he snarled.  
  
Shivi turned back and helped pull him free.  “Wait in the hub,” she said. “We will bring whoever is wounded through there. I don’t know who it is, but I need to go. Oona says she’ll wait with you.”  
  
He hadn’t seen Oona approach, but there she was by Finn’s side. She patted his arm. “Come on,” she said.    
  
Shivi smiled at Finn’s expression. “Just wait until she teaches you to curse. See you two later!” With a wave, running toward the hangar doors, her lekku bouncing behind her.  
  
Finn and Oona made their much slower way into the hub, hugging the wall as personnel and droids hurried past. The hangar doors were wide open, and even from across the room Finn could feel the heat of the day wafting inward. So far everyone was hurrying outside — droids and engineers and medics rushing out onto the glaring tarmac. It was horrible to have to watch them go by.  
  
“He’s fine,” he said, mostly to himself. “He’s fine, she said wounded not killed, he’s fine…”  
  
Oona hummed softly and took his hand in her paw as they waited along the opposite wall. After what seemed like hours, the first few people trotted back inside. Every face Finn saw that didn’t belong to Poe made his belly clench a little tighter.  When the medics returned, navigating their transport cart, he strained to see which two orange-clad figures were laying on the back, would’ve hurtled over to look if Oona hadn’t gripped his hand. Her claws were very sharp.  She pointed to where Shivi was jogging beside the cart.  
  
“He’s okay,” she called out. “I told him to hurry.”  
  
Finn slumped back into his chair, suddenly shaky. He hadn’t noticed how much he’d been bracing himself for the worst. It was possible he’d been bracing himself since the morning Poe departed, eight days before.  
  
Finally, a familiar BB unit rolled into view, silhouetted in the entranceway and accompanied by a taller, if slumping, figure.  Finn’s breath caught as he realized he’d recognize those silhouettes anywhere.  
  
“Poe,” he called. “Poe!”  
  
And there he was, caught by the hub’s lighting, his helmet in hand and a full beard on his face. Finn saw the moment Poe spied him, watched his face freeze, and then brighten. Even from across the distance of the hub Poe’s gaze set his heart pounding. _I’m so happy to see you_ , Finn thought fiercely. It wasn’t the time to talk about their last conversation, but he hoped his expression said enough.  
  
After looking around for a moment, Poe handed his helmet and gear off to a nearby tech and began walking over, threading past people and droids, as BB-8 caromed along behind. He didn’t take his eyes off Finn, didn’t say anything until he stood just before him and Oona.  BB-8 examined each of them, peering especially up at Poe, and then rolled to Finn and chirped a greeting.  
  
Poe smiled cautiously.  “Hi,” he said.  
  
“Hi,” Finn said.  “Welcome back.”  
  
“Thanks,” Poe said, like the word was a weight he could drop. He moved to crouch beside them, and then simply sat down. “Thanks,” he said again, softer this time, looping his arms around his knees. He was too far away for Finn to reach from his chair, too far away by a collection of centimeters. Finn’s fingers twitched on his lap.  
  
“Who’s wounded?”  His relief at seeing Poe alive, if exhausted, outweighed his worry for his other friends, but not by much.  
  
Poe flicked a glance toward the med-wing doors. “Snap and Iolo,” he said. His hair was falling forward, curling over his brow, and Finn watched Oona brush it back carefully.  “They’ll be okay. Got surprised, had to hole up then take the long way back. Bad news is we lost at least two ships. Good news is we obtained a new transport. New to us anyway.” He shrugged.  
  
Oona began to speak — “Good,” Finn heard — and then her words flew too fast for him to catch. She’d placed both of her paws under Poe’s chin, stroking his beard, and Poe closed his eyes as she chattered on.  
  
Finn watched, feeling a complicated mess of emotions he didn’t care to analyze. Despite hearing the occasional familiar word, he felt like he ought not to try to understand. This conversation wasn’t for him.  
  
“I know,” Poe was saying.  “No, you’re absolutely right.” Both BB-8 and Oona were talking to him, now. Finn knew he should look away, but somehow staring elsewhere made him feel like more of an intruder than watching his friends. Whatever Oona said next, however, made Poe open his eyes again, and look directly at Finn. He smiled, just around the eyes but it softened the rest of his face, and his gaze felt as intimate as whatever moment he’d just shared with Oona.  
  
She concluded by cuffing Poe across the head, squeaking. Poe blinked, and then his grin was back full-force. “Okay,” he said, sounding both amused and exasperated. “I promise. Now go fix our droids!”  
  
Oona turned to pat Finn’s knee and said goodbye. Resigned to not knowing the details of whatever had just transpired, Finn mimicked her words, not very well but she rubbed her cheeks, which Finn remembered was an Ewok gesture of affection.  He waved to both her and BB-8 as they departed for the mech-bay.  
  
Poe was looking at him, the smile still lurking around his eyes. His face was different with a beard, fuller, and Finn had the impulse to run his own hands under Poe’s chin. He gripped his wheels instead.  
  
“Finn,” Poe murmured. “Do you mind if I lean on you for a few minutes?”  
  
“Ah, no?” He had no idea what Poe meant. “That’s fine.”  
  
“Thank you,” Poe sighed. He scooted closer and relaxed right into Finn’s leg. The chair wiggled and Finn locked the wheels before really knowing what was going on. Poe nestled his head just above Finn’s knee and groaned a little.  
  
“Thanks,” he said again. “Don’t let me fall asleep. I just want to rest a minute.”  
  
“No problem.” Poe’s hair was spilling over Finn’s thigh, his eyes were closed, and Finn could see the sweat and grime lining the open collar of Poe’s jumpsuit. He set his hands down carefully on the chair’s arms. “Surely a bed would be more comfortable,” he said, as he felt Poe’s breathing even out.  
  
Poe blinked slowly. His lashes were very long. “Stars, a _bed_. I don’t remember what that is.” He closed his eyes again. “This is fine.”  
  
“Don’t fall asleep,” Finn reminded him. The hub, so full of commotion five minutes before, was all but empty now. It could have held dozens of people, hundreds, and Finn still wouldn’t have cared to look up. He imagined tracing a finger over Poe’s brow, along those laugh lines and the curve of his ear. His whole body felt full of wanting, full of the possibility that he could have, if only he asked. That Poe might give, freely. That he, Finn, was ready to give in return. He took a shaky breath.  
  
“Oona’s sort of my sister, by the way,” Poe said without opening his eyes.  
  
“Oh?” Finn let his breath back out. Not the right time. Not yet.  
  
“She was yelling at me for not visiting her more often.” His teeth flashed in a quick grin.  
  
“Aha,” Finn said, still trying to reel himself back from that moment he’d created, all in his head.  
  
“I used to be friends with her cousin,” Poe continued softly. “She and her clan adopted me a while back.”  
  
Finn waited for a minute, because there was a story there, surely, but Poe didn’t say anything more.  “What happened to the cousin?” he asked at last.  
  
Poe sighed, and all traces of the grin left his face. “She died. Was killed. While back.”  
  
Finn lifted his hand, set it back down. How much death had Poe seen? How many faces and names did he already carry? Enough. Too many. And the war was far from over. He thought about the way Poe seemed to smile with his whole face, with his whole self, and how often it made others around him smile too. There was a certain defiance in that smile, Finn realized. Not against an enemy with blasters, nor any opponent another could see.  
  
He felt Poe relaxing again, shoulder tucked under Finn’s knee, cheek pressed against his thigh, and Finn gave into temptation and ran his fingers over Poe’s hair.  
  
Poe made a little noise. “Don’t fall asleep,” Finn whispered. He brushed Poe’s hair again, gently. It was warm, and needed washing, and Finn honed in on the sensation of it across his palm. He swallowed.  
  
“I’m going to fall asleep if you keep doing that,” Poe murmured. He groaned, and sat up. Finn tucked his hands back in his lap. Poe rubbed his face and pushed his hair back, and pushed at it again when it fell forward into his eyes. “I need to go debrief,” he said. “I’m probably late already.”  
  
He hauled himself to his feet, bracing one hand on Finn’s chair.  “Do you, ah. Do you want help getting back, or anything?”  
  
What Finn wanted was too big to encompass with words. He settled for not wanting to watch Poe walk away yet. “I can do it myself now, wanna see?”  
  
For an instant Poe’s weariness dropped away. “Absolutely, buddy.”  
  
Poe kept his hand on Finn’s chair as they moved toward the med-wing, and it didn’t take a genius to see that he was propping himself up. “When’s the last time you slept?”  
  
“Um,” Poe said. “We got ambushed three — no four days ago. Only naps since then.”  
  
Finn made a note to resupply the energy boosters in Black Squadron’s med kits. “I want to hear that story later,” he said. They paused to wave at Shivi as she rushed across the wing, and she smiled back before disappearing through another set of doors.  
  
“It’s a good one.”  Poe sounded almost awake. “Wait til Snap and Iolo are patched up though. They’re the ones who really saved our asses. Well and Pava and Karé too. A real team effort. Invite ‘em all over,” he said as Finn parked his chair near his bed. “We’ll make a party of it.”    
  
Finn smiled to himself and locked his wheels. Poe, looking very much like he wanted to sit down again and was making the choice not to, slouched against the bed.  
  
“Want me to spot you or something?” he asked.  
  
Getting up was an awfully undignified process, and Finn wasted an instant being embarrassed that Poe would see him fumbling. “I would appreciate that. Actually,” he said, inspired. “You could help me stand.”  
  
Poe pushed himself upright. “You haven’t stood up before?”  
  
“No, I have a couple of times, but Kele wants me to practice, like just standing, and it’s easier if someone’s holding me.”  Finn winced. “I mean, to help me balance —”  
  
“I get it.” Poe’s teeth were white against his beard. He held his hands out loosely, half-beckoning. “Tell me what to do.”  
  
“Let me get myself up first, and then hold my arms.” Finn had watched a holo once about baby animals, but he’d never thought he’d be able to relate.  
  
Feet flat on the floor, hands gripping the armrests of the chair, Finn heaved, once, twice, three times and then stood with a groan. He overbalanced and shot out an arm to grip the bed before he fell, but Poe was there, stepping into him, one hand on Finn’s waist and the other under his elbow, steady and strong. Finn slowly straightened, gasping in a way that felt like laughter, and finally stood, with his feet under him and his body aligned and Poe beaming immediately before him.  
  
“How does it feel?” Poe’s voice was low.  
  
“Better than this morning.” Finn rolled his shoulders and gave up wondering if Poe could tell he was flushed. “Keep holding onto me, but take a step back.” This was part of the balance exercise Ludo taught him, but it was hard to do on his own.  
  
Poe stepped back, letting his hands slide down Finn’s arms. His eyes never left Finn’s face. Finn gripped Poe’s hands, noting that they were warm, and dry. “Steady,” he told himself. “Steady...”  He was wobbling, listing a little to the left, but there was none of the dizziness Kele had warned him about, nor was he in more pain than usual. He looked back at Poe, felt Poe’s fingers brush the inside of his wrist.  
  
“I want to come to you,” Finn said. “Could you hold me up, if I fell?” It was probably an unfair question; Poe hadn’t slept in days and he still had work to do before he could sleep again.  
  
“Yes,” he said immediately. “I won’t let you fall.”  
  
“Okay,” Finn said, prepping himself. It was two steps. Right leg, left leg. The bed was half a step away, and he knew from experience how solid that thing was. If he fell, he could fall that way and not hurt Poe.  
  
Poe’s hands flexed in Finn’s. He offered a little smile, which Finn returned with a nod. “Here goes.”  
  
Right leg, take a step, foot on the ground, shift his weight but not too much, feel Poe’s hands sliding along his arms — steady — steady — left leg, step, foot on the ground, Poe’s hands on his waist, Finn’s own arms reaching, shift his weight, and then lean — not fall — into Poe.  
  
He wrapped his arms around Poe, felt Poe settle in, his chin on Finn’s shoulder and his hands loose at Finn’s back. Poe’s beard tickled just behind Finn’s ear and he shivered.  
  
“I wanted to give you a hug,” Finn whispered. Poe hummed, a sound Finn felt as much as he heard, and Finn curled his arms a little tighter around Poe’s waist. “I’m so glad you came back.”  
  
Somehow Poe turned that little hum into a sigh, and Finn had the sensation that he was emptying himself of all breath, letting it go until there was nothing left inside. When he inhaled again, a long, long moment later, Finn pressed his fingers against Poe’s back to feel his ribs expand, and pressed his mouth, very gently, against Poe’s neck. Beneath the stubble, Poe’s pulse beat rapidly against his lips. For some reason Finn felt like he might cry, though he wasn’t sad, not at all.  
  
“You give good hugs,” Poe murmured finally. His exhaustion was catching; Finn felt sleepy, languorous even, and found he had no inclination to move.  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “This is my third one.”  
  
“Your third hug?” Poe sounded like he was dozing off on Finn’s shoulder. Finn imagined coaxing Poe into his bed, where they might fall asleep together, wrapped warm around one another. Safe.  
  
“It’s something else I need to practice,” he said instead.  
  
Poe squeezed, and adjusted his arms around Finn’s back, as if to gather him in, and hold him close. “You can practice all you want with me, buddy. I don’t mind this at all.”  
  
They remained there for some time, swaying gently. Eventually Finn realized that their heartbeats had synced. He hadn’t realized that was something that people could do.


	6. Chapter 6

  
  
When Poe had suggested having a little party to celebrate Snap and Iolo’s recovery, Finn envisioned something like their movie night several weeks ago.  He mentioned this to Shivi during an afternoon spent shadowing her around the med-wing, shortly after Black Squadron’s return. She slid him a wry glance.   
  
“You are moving in with Oona soon, yes?”   
  
“At the end of the week, yeah.”  Oona’s previous roommate had been one of the pilots killed in the battle on Starkiller Base. She’d asked him if he would consider taking the empty bunk once he was walking again, because she would rather share a room with a friend than no one at all.  Finn had agreed immediately.   
  
“I imagine we will discharge Snap and Iolo then, as well. And while it’s true that we all love of our pilots, you have become very much our favorite. Therefore,” she continued blandly as Finn stared, “you can be assured that there will be a party, and that everyone on-base will attend.”   
  
She grinned at whatever she found on Finn’s face.  “You won’t be required to do anything. I’ve found that the Resistance tends to take any excuse available to, ah, party, and your recovery — even more than Snap’s and Iolo’s, quite honestly — is worth celebrating.”   
  
It was true he’d already noticed the staff acting far more jovial in the lull periods than he would ever have expected; the first time he’d heard two people laughing in the hallway, he caught himself tensed, braced to hear an officer’s inevitable reprimand. It never came. But the idea of the entire base throwing him a party a little embarrassing.  
  
“It’s still not something I fully understand,” Shivi admitted.  “Of course community is essential to my people, gathering together and celebrating one another’s lives, but we are not at all as noisy.”  
  
“Thanks for the warning,” he murmured. Perhaps there would be interesting food to try.   
  
   
.  
  
  
Finn found Poe alone in the mess that night, long after the dinner crowd had cleared.   
  
“You’re up late,” he called, navigating between the tables. It was still easier to use his chair than to walk, though this morning he’d traversed the length of the gym with the help of a cane. Ludo had actually cheered, a fact which still made Finn grin.  
  
Poe was hunched over a table in the corner. If Finn hadn’t been in the habit of glancing into the mess when he departed the library, he would’ve missed him completely.  “Yeah,” Poe said. He sat back and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “General gave me a day off.”  
  
“Are you sick?”  He looked a little sick, Finn thought as he parked his chair. Presumably Poe had slept since his return, but he really didn’t appear rested. He’d shaved, maybe combed his hair, and yet seemed ready to slump forward onto the table top. Finn eyed the tall bottle at Poe’s elbow. “No,” he said. “You’re drunk.”   
  
“Not very.” Poe wasn’t quite looking at him. “This shit’s too expensive to get drunk off of. Anyway I gotta report tomorrow at ten-hundred.”   
  
It occurred to Finn that Poe might not want company. But he studied the tension in Poe’s shoulders, the way he seemed to be wearing weariness like a jacket, and the way that weariness seemed born not of exhaustion, but sadness. Finn leaned forward. “Are you okay?”  
  
Poe took a shaky breath. He still hadn’t met Finn’s gaze. “Today’s the anniversary of my mom’s death,” he mumbled finally. “It’s hitting me harder this year for some reason, don’t know why.”   
  
Several pieces fell into place in Finn’s mind. Later, he would call Rey, tell her that he’d never thought about anniversaries before, death anniversaries, and how they were days to remember year after year. Later, he would look up the dates of Han Solo’s death, and Slip’s, and wonder if there could be something good about letting oneself be saddened by memories. Maybe there could be.   
  
But Finn wasn’t sure Poe was finding anything good in his memories, now. Poe took a sip from the bottle, and closed his eyes for a second too long.  Finn gently took the bottle from him and pretended to study its label.   
  
“Wine from Yavin 4,” Poe said softly. He glanced at Finn, and then back to the table top. “I … I used to have this little ritual. Go home, buy a bottle of wine, and, ah, share it with the tree my mom rescued.”   
  
“Your mother rescued a tree?”  That story was definitely not in any of the material Finn had found in the library.   
  
Poe half-smiled. “Yeah, I know.  But yeah, when I was a baby she and Luke liberated a pair of Force-sensitive saplings from an Imperial lab. Luke gave her one, and she and my dad planted it behind our house.  We grew up together,” he added.   
  
It took Finn a moment to realize Poe was talking about the tree. And Skywalker.  “…Wow.”  
  
“But since home’s not really home anymore,” Poe continued, “the General gives me some time to get not-drunk here. You can have some of that, if you want.” He gestured vaguely to the bottle.  
  
Finn sniffed it. “Never had wine,” he remarked. It smelled interesting, a twisting, sweet kind of scent that wound its way into his nostrils. Didn’t wine come from fruit? Rotten fruit?   
  
Poe propped himself up. “That’s a pretty good one. Really should find a glass, it’s a crime to drink it straight from the bottle.”  
  
Finn froze. He’d heard the expression, of course, but on the other hand, alcohol was forbidden for Stormtroopers. There could be entire law codes controlling its consumption for all he knew.   
  
Poe stared, and then huffed out something approaching a laugh. “No, I mean — you’re supposed to pour wine into special glasses, to let it aerate or something. Improves the whole sensory experience, or so the General tells me.”   
  
Some of Poe’s sadness had lifted. It was possible he was forgetting to feel guilty about grieving his mother’s death in Finn’s presence. Finn set down the bottle.  “Be right back,” he said, and rolled off toward the kitchen before Poe could say anything.  
  
He returned a few minutes later. “No funny glasses, but would these work?” He held up two small bowls.   
  
Poe actually grinned. “Maybe? Probably. Let’s find out.”  He started to pour the wine, then stopped. “You’re not on any meds right now, are you?”  
  
Finn thought of the unopened bottle of painkillers nestled at the bottom of his stuff-sack. “Nope.”   
  
“Great.” Poe filled both bowls about a third of the way up. The wine was a startlingly deep purple, and Finn decided that the white bowls he’d found set off the color rather nicely. “It really is good wine,” Poe said. “Should be savored, you know?”  He took a sip, slurping a little around the edge of the bowl. Finn watched his mouth, and watched his eyes close as he sighed.   
  
“Does it taste like home?”  
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“You’re not just remembering your mother, then.”   
  
Poe opened his eyes, met Finn’s for a moment. “I suppose not.”  
  
In truth, Finn wasn’t sure he liked wine. It was bitter — the first sip seemed to kick him in the molars — and it tasted much less like fruit than he’d expected it would. But he wasn’t sure he disliked it, either. It was definitely interesting. He kept drinking. Poe told him about the valleys where this wine was made, and how the first time he’d tried it, he’d been six years old and mistaken it for a glass of juice. Finn grinned, and when Poe gestured at his empty bowl, he nodded and watched Poe fill it again.   
  
Somewhere in the middle of the third bowl, they lapsed into silence. Around the mess, janitor droids whirred and mumbled, scraping tables and chairs back into orderly rows, vacuuming the floors, and turning off the overhead lights. Finally, he and Poe were alone. The one light above them made Poe’s eyes look black, and exhausted. Finn remembered the way Poe’s pulse had beat against his lips just a couple of nights ago and rubbed a hand over his mouth.  Poe met his gaze briefly. Finn took another sip from his bowl.  
  
“Slip’s the first person I’ve known who died,” he murmured finally. The wine had him feeling heavy and warm, like he was just waking from a pleasant sleep. It occurred to him that he oughtn’t be saying this, not right now, but at the same time he felt no inclination to stop. “He was first person I talked with, shared time with, to die. He died right in front of me.”  
  
Poe took a breath, and then pressed his lips together.   
  
“I still don’t know how I feel about that,” he continued. “Except I do, a little bit. A little.”   
  
He propped himself on one elbow and began tracing a finger around the edge of his wine bowl. “What I know is that I’m relieved it was you. That I know who killed him, that it was you, and not a stranger.  I think if I went my whole life not knowing who killed him, I’d begin to hate that person, just a little piece of me but I still would.”  
  
“Does a little piece of you hate me for it?”  Poe’s voice was barely audible. As Finn spoke he’d hunched over the table, one hand a fist in his hair.  
  
“No.” Finn waited until Poe looked up before continuing. “I don’t think I could ever hate you, Poe. You’re my friend. What I hate is that the battle made killing necessary. No, wait,” he said, figuring this out even as he spoke. “I hate that the First Order is making killing necessary. That the place I came from, that the Empire it came from, makes all of it justifiable.”   
  
Poe was watching him, but he didn’t look especially relieved. “I’m going to kill again, Finn,” he said. “That’s … that’s what I am. I’m a soldier. I can’t not be.”   
  
Finn stared down at his wine-smeared bowl. It was dangerous to dream too much of another life when it was so far out of reach.  He prayed to whatever was listening that there would be time enough, later, for a life outside the war. Was something so far removed from the current reality even possible? Would they ever have the chance to find out?  
  
He sighed. “When I imagined Slip’s killer was a stranger, that stranger enjoyed killing. Enjoyed picking off Stormtroopers, kept a tally and bragged about it. That’s what we were taught, you know. I hated that stranger, and hated how easily I felt that way.  So that’s what I mean by it being a relief to know it was you.”  He took another sip of wine.   
  
Poe’s expression was hard to read.  “Sometimes I do enjoy it, Finn,” he whispered.   
  
“And after?”  
  
He looked away. “Don’t ask me to think about that.”   
  
Finn nodded. Then: “I can’t be a soldier anymore, Poe. Not even here. Will a part of you hate me for that?”   
  
“What?” Poe reared back. “No, of course not. Stars, how could I even — when you’re so much better than — ”   He stopped, eyes wide.  
  
For the duration of their conversation, indeed since he’d parked himself at this table, Finn had wanted to wrap his arm around Poe’s shoulders, or brush his finger along Poe’s wrist, or run his hand through Poe’s hair. Now he reached, very slowly, across the table, and touched the tips of Poe’s fingers with his own.  
  
Poe gripped his hand.  
  
“I don’t think I am,” Finn whispered at last.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Better than you, or anyone here. I don’t think I am.”   
  
He stared into Poe’s eyes, felt the warmth of his hand and calluses on his palm, and willed Poe to believe him. He couldn’t assess his worth by the efforts of others. That was what he’d learned, before. He couldn’t — wouldn’t — see himself that way any longer.   
  
“Do you think you’re worse?”  Poe’s voice was hoarse.  
  
There was the rub. Finn regarded his and Poe’s hands, ran his thumb along the back of Poe’s knuckle.  “I’m working on that part.”   
  
“Yeah.” Poe offered the ghost of a smile.  “Yeah, me too. Maybe we could work on that part together?”   
  
Finn smiled back. “I’d like that.”   
  
  
.  
  


  
_Do you think you’re worse?_  
  
 _I’m working on that part._  
  
It wasn’t a lie. It even had the benefit of implying constant progress. He was working on — something.   
  
But if he let himself feel it, underneath the preoccupation of his daily routine, his determination to read everything he could in the library, and the real, exhausting effort of retraining his body to work for him once again, underneath all of that Finn had buried a sadness so profound it terrified him.  
  
He hauled himself into bed a few nights later and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. Seventeen. Or twenty-three, depending on how you count the splits.  He’d imagined they were rivers, starship trajectories, the veins of some giant alien’s gut.   
  
Tonight, the lines on the ceiling became ropes spanning a pit yawning at the bottom of his self, and those ropes stretched from rib to rib. There was an abyss below his breastbone.  He probed carefully at that space. It felt a lot like being shoved out an airlock.   
  
One feeling bubbled up from the rest: He was tired of naming all the things he’d never done before. If he wasn’t careful, he could come up with such a long list that it left him believing he had never done anything at all. Anything worth being proud of, at least.  
  
“I am learning things,” he whispered to himself, on this last night in his dreary room, as the shadows seemed to whisper about worthlessness and adequacy, about wasted time and time he’d lost forever. “I am learning Ewokese, not because it’s necessary but because it makes my friend happy. Making her happy makes me happy. I am learning what happiness feels like. I am learning how to heal people. I am learning to walk again. I have friends. I rescued them. They’re alive because — because I was brave. I can be brave. I can _love_. I am going to be okay.”  
  
Tears tracked down his cheeks. He rubbed his face in the pillow, then reached for his tablet.   
  
“Rey,” he said a few minutes later. “I’m okay, it’s just really late, and you’re right, I haven’t been sleeping, but I get nightmares, and even when I don’t my head’s still a mess. I’m sorry I haven’t called, I just didn’t want you to see me like this.”  He wiped at his eyes. “Too late for that I guess. It’s my conditioning, the logical part of me knows that, but it’s hard, sometimes.”  
  
He took a breath. If he said all of this out loud, maybe that would make it better. “All of an ensign’s value is in what they could be, not in what they are. And a Stormtrooper on their own isn’t valuable. No one cares. A squadron is worth something, but only in how it relates to the larger mechanism. I was nothing. I was _nothing_. That is so hard to put in past tense.”   
  
He stared at the window set high in the wall, at the orange security light outside. Was it strange that the presence of such a window could give him a kind of comfort? Only planet-side structures had windows like that, and lights like that.  
  
Finn looked back at his tablet’s screen. “If I’d died on Jakku,” he said, “or if they’d really hit that TIE Poe and I escaped in, no one would have mourned me. No one would’ve been sad. I just would have been another loss. But the other day I found Poe grieving, even though his mother’s been dead for years. He was drinking a bottle of wine in her memory, and he was sad, and all the time I kept thinking about how many other days he mourns the deaths of people he loved. About what that’s even like.  
  
“I have two now. Two people I know, Slip and Solo.  I don’t know how Poe smiles all the time. I think he remembers every one of his.”  
  
He huffed out a breath, more deliberate than a sigh. “There was this one show I used to watch — well, we’d smuggle in whole data cards, mostly porn but sometimes with these random clips thrown in? I didn’t like the porn, it made me feel weird, but I’d watch the other stuff. Anyway there was this one I got to see a couple different clips of, I actually think it was meant for children, because the characters were all small and they spoke Basic really slowly. But they were friends. Even I knew that.”  
  
There was a kind of clarity that came very late at night, a flavor of truth that could be profound instead of painful. The trick was knowing the difference. The shadows and the silence and the certainty that you were the only one awake, the only one alive, they never helped to distill truth from fear. But talking to someone could.  
  
“I think,” Finn said slowly, voicing his thoughts from this night for a future Rey, who would send her reply to an even farther in the future Finn, “that there’s a part of me that expected having friends now would undo everything from before. But it hasn’t. Of course it hasn’t. I don’t know why I thought it would.”   
  
_Because_ , he thought, _those clips were the first clue you had to another life. Because you turned them into a promise. Because they were the start of what got you out._  
  
“Anyway.” He rubbed a hand over his hair. “I miss you. I miss you, and if you were here I’d give you a hug. If you wanted one, I mean. I hugged Poe the other day — because I can do that again!”   
  
He stopped, struck by the realization of how much had happened since he’d last spoken to Rey. Grinning, welcoming the distraction from his own misery, he said, “Rey, I can stand again! I can walk! Not very fast, and I need a cane but I’m doing it! It feels good, stars it feels good. When you come back I’ll be waiting right on the tarmac for you, I promise.”   
  
He kept grinning: a tiny defiance against the sadness. “Rey,” he said as the seconds ticked down. “Rey. There’s so much to tell you. I can’t wait to see you again.”   
  
  
.  
  
  
Finn returned from the gym the following morning to find the med-wing crowded with people. They spilled into the hallway, clustered in groups of threes and fours, bumped elbows, gestured with hands holding cups and plates, laughed and bent close, chatted and smirked. And, as if all of this hadn’t produced enough noise, Finn actually heard _music_ playing somewhere.  
  
“Hey Finn!” a voice called. “Looking good!” He glanced around — surely that hadn’t been Kalonia — caught smiles and waves in his direction, and hoped he didn’t appear entirely alarmed. Through the crowds, he saw Kele throw back their head and laugh, and there was Ludo, looking uncharacteristically pleased with himself. At least they seemed to be having fun. At last he spotted Shivi weaving her way toward him. She looked half-apologetic, but she was also carrying a plate piled with startlingly colorful food, which she offered to him.  
  
“You understand why I warned you,” she said, pitching her voice so he could hear.  
  
He selected a round, soft-looking pink thing, oddly compelled by the idea of being able to put it in his mouth. “I appreciate it,” he said, taking a bite of the whatever-it-was. “Oh wow.” Golden syrup, absurdly sweet, oozed over his tongue in a way that made his teeth scream. He popped the rest of the little sugar bomb in his mouth and tried licking his fingers at the same time.   
  
Shivi handed him a napkin. “The General obtained a high-class bakery droid several years ago,” she said. “Only she has the access codes to power it on, and she only does so for special occasions. The droid … very much enjoys baking.”   
  
Finn gave up trying to clean his fingers. “I guess this is a special occasion, then.”   
  
“It absolutely is!”  Jess Pava appeared behind Shivi and snaked an arm around her waist. “Hey Finn! Congrats on getting better and all that. Thanks for the shindig, I love these things.”  
  
“You love the food,” Karé Kun said. She was holding two plates, one of which was balanced on a tall cup of what looked like juice.  
  
“Same thing.” Jess peered at the plates. “Sweet and savory?”   
  
Karé raised her brow in a look that dared Jess to doubt her. “You have to balance it out,” she explained to Finn. “Maximum flavor experience.”   
  
Finn nodded, and considered the crowds of people. “Would someone mind getting me a plate?”  
  
He ended up parked in a little corner near Iolo and Snap, with the two plates Karé had collected balanced on his lap. Iolo was still wearing his arm cast and would be for another week, while Snap, who’d endured a severe concussion and a couple of busted ribs, sat in a chair next to Finn. The place was so noisy that he and Snap resorted to exaggerated eye-rolling, shrugs, and smiles instead of actual conversation. Iolo, beyond them, contentedly ate his way through the heaped plates of food on his own lap.  
  
It seemed like the entire base had turned out, and everyone was intent on saying something to the recovered patients.  Finn tried pretending all the smiling people, most of whom he didn’t recognize, were offering their congratulations to him, Snap, and Iolo equally, but no-one was offering the pilots extra food. Finn’s lap was only so big; eventually someone brought a little table. He managed to direct the grinning well-wisher to at least place the table nearer to Iolo and Snap, and hoped he wasn’t stepping on anyone’s cultural protocol by sharing the wealth, as it were.   
  
The General emerged from the sea of smiling people and Finn, mouth full of something very spicy, attempted to nod with dignity while wiping his nose. He heard Snap snort a laugh. Fortunately she took pity on him and only nodded back, albeit with a smile in her eyes, before moving on to greet Kalonia.   
  
Poe appeared briefly, and the sight of him made something in Finn’s chest feel full and buoyant at the same time. He glanced at Finn’s growing collection of food, held up a finger, and threaded his way back out of sight.   
  
“If he comes back with drinks I’m going to marry him myself,” Snap declared.  
  
Finn glanced at Snap. “Does Poe want to get married?”  
  
He shrugged. “I’ll ask him.”  
  
“Not if I ask him first.”   
  
Indeed, Poe returned a few minutes later carrying four tall cups. As the crowd parted to let him through, Finn saw BB-8 was actually leading the way, several rolls of blue cloth grasped in its pincer.  
  
“Extra napkins,” Poe said, crouching before Finn. He distributed the cups. “And juice. I saw Chef’s dumplings over there, this’ll cool your mouth off again.”   
  
Iolo, accepting a napkin, announced, “Snap is prepared to fight Finn for your hand in marriage, Poe.”   
  
Finn managed not to spit out his drink. BB-8 trilled very loudly — Finn assumed it was the droid’s version of laughter — while Poe tucked his feet under him and reached for a plate of food on the little table.  
  
“Now Snap,” Poe said, fluttering his lashes as he bit into an outrageously blue puffball confection. Snap actually giggled. “You know I love you, my comrade, my friend, but there are those pesky rules against inter-squadron marriages and I just don’t think we should risk the General’s ire.”   
  
“She broke those rules herself!” Snap swiped a yellow puffball from Poe’s plate.  
  
“Which is a very good reason why we should not, don’t you think?”  Poe winked up at Finn.    
  
Finn blinked and reminded himself to smile back. He casually reached for something green and healthy-looking.  
  
“And I suppose _Finn_ is exempt from these rules?” Snap couldn’t quite pull off a mournful tone with all the yellow crumbs in his beard.  
  
“Of course,” Poe said. The grin was all over his face now. “Finn is a man unto himself, unconstrained by squadron law. And remember, he swept me away from the clutches of certain doom. I lay myself at his feet.”  He spread his hands, one still holding his plate and the other dusted blue, and beamed in Finn’s direction.  
  
This was a performance. This was for laughing at; it didn’t mean anything. So Finn slid a glance at Snap, cocked his brow, and said, “Afraid there was never really any competition, Wexley.”   
  
Even Iolo laughed at that one.  
  
“Hey,” Poe said, after the four of them had plowed through many more little plates of tiny foods, after another dozen people had come up to where they sat and stared, grinning, at Finn for a few seconds too long, after BB-8 had trundled off to find Oona (who was, it turned out, in charge of the music), after Finn realized he felt too-full in more ways than one. Poe tapped Finn’s leg. “Want to get out of here?”   
  
Snap, who was either still on painkillers or feeling loopy from all the sugar, whooped and punched Finn in the shoulder. Finn winced before he could stop himself but Snap didn’t notice. He was too busy clapping Poe on the back and ignoring Iolo’s attempts to shush him. Maybe it was painkillers and sugar.  
  
Finn set his stack of empty plates on the little table and unlocked his wheels.  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”   
  
It still took them ten minutes to flee the party. It seemed like everyone and their droid had something to say to either Finn, or Poe, or to both of them. Finn pinned a smile on his face, wheeled himself onward through the throngs of people, and heard Poe behind him, shouting and laughing and generally deploying charm until they were through the worst of it.  Finn glanced around and found that Poe was also gesturing grandly with Finn’s cane, arcing it back and forth in an apparent effort to clear the way. It wasn’t really working, but he certainly appeared to be having fun.  
  
Finally they gained the hub, beautifully quiet after the noise of the med-wing.  The doors to the entrance bay were open; Finn pushed himself up the ramp and out into the sunshine.  
  
“Here,” Poe said. He hooked the cane back onto Finn’s chair. “I know a little spot that should be pretty nice, this time of day.”   
  
A few minutes later, Finn peered up at a conspicuously orange and black X-Wing, and raised a brow at Poe.  
  
Poe actually blushed. “Well.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Look, I knew there’d be shipping boxes here, to sit on or whatever, and I knew it’d be in the shade, because … I mean, this is where I go, you know? Like, to be alone. You’ve got the library,” he added like it proved a point.   
  
It occurred to Finn that while the version of Poe he’d just seen inside was very consistent with how Poe always acted in public, Poe rarely seemed  awkward in front of anyone else. To witness it felt a little like receiving a gift.  He hefted himself to his feet.  
  
“It’s a nice spot,” he said. The bulk of Black One shaded them both, and a breeze tugged at the hem of Finn’s shirt. Poe watched as he reached for his cane and shuffle-stepped over to the shipping boxes, but he didn’t offer to help. Finn appreciated that.  He took a breath, grinned.  “It smells like you.”   
  
Poe’s brows shot up.  “I … what?”   
  
Finn wiggled his toes in his slippers. He would never take standing for granted again.  “It smells like you,” he repeated. “Engines and fuel and grease or something, you always smell a little like that. And like soap of course.” His cheeks were hurting: he was still grinning. “I like it,” he added, because Poe was looking like he wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or amused.  
  
Poe took a few steps toward him and glanced up at the sky. Finn thought he saw a smile peek around the corner of Poe’s mouth. “I’ve never thought about how anyone smelled before,” Poe said.   
  
“Nothing smells good on a star destroyer,” Finn said.   
  
Poe’s smile dropped away.  
  
“Did you know,” Finn said. “Everything about that party is illegal in the First Order. I can think of five policies and at least three ordinances it violates, easy.”  Poe opened his mouth, but Finn shook his head. “I want to be happy right now. I don’t want to go back there. But sometimes it’s hard not to compare.”   
  
Poe nodded slowly. He was closer, somehow. Finn wasn’t sure which of them had moved, but he could see the way Poe’s eyelashes curled, and count the few grey hairs in Poe’s stubble. He inhaled.  
  
“Well,” Poe murmured. “Is there anything we can do to help you feel happy right now?”   
  
Finn stared at this man, who held his laughter in his eyes; who did not shy from sadness and did not surrender to it, either; who loved, and who was loved, and Finn took one last step closer.  
  
“I’d like to kiss you, Poe Dameron,” he said. “If that’d be okay.”   
  
He watched the way Poe’s eyes widened for an instant, heard his little intake of breath, felt his exhale.  “Yeah,” Poe said. His gaze dropped to Finn’s mouth, came up again. “Yeah, that’d be okay.”   
  
With one hand on his cane, Finn brought his other hand up, sketched the line of Poe’s brow before cupping his cheek. Poe’s eyes were on his, and his mouth was soft and full and curving upward. Finn smiled back. He felt the ends of Poe’s hair against his fingertips, felt Poe’s hands come to rest on his hips, and Finn angled his head to press his lips very gently to Poe’s.  
  
Poe breathed, and Finn felt it across his cheek.   
  
“Yeah?” he said.  
  
“Definitely.” Poe nudged him closer, chest to chest and hip to hip, and kissed Finn back. “Definitely yeah.”   
  
Poe’s lashes were long, his stubble a little scratchy, his brows somehow eloquent, which was a stupid word to describe eyebrows but Finn couldn’t think of anything practical. Eloquent. Captivating. Beautiful. He wanted to gaze at Poe’s face for eons. If he could take a holo of this moment he would, preserve it forever and watch it when he was alone again, but even a holo wouldn’t capture the feel of it, the scent and warmth and tickling breath, the sensation of Poe’s hair against his palm, and Poe’s fingers running under his shirt, Poe’s heart beating fast against his own.   
  
And he tasted so sweet. Delicious even, like sugar, like — puffball.  
  
Finn grinned despite himself.   
  
“Something funny?” Poe said, mouth still against Finn’s.   
  
“You taste good.”  Finn licked Poe’s lips. “Real good.”   
  
“Glad you think so.” Poe brought one of his hands up to cradle the back of Finn’s head, let the other drift below Finn’s waistband and squeezed. “And here I was worried,” he said, pressing openmouthed kisses over Finn’s face. “All those sweets would make it weird.”   
  
“Nah.” It was hard to do this while smiling. “Unless your tongue is blue or something, that’d be pretty weird.” They were making a commendable effort anyway.  
  
“Is it?” Poe leaned back and stuck out his tongue.  
  
“Hmm.” Finn pretended to look, rocked his hips into Poe’s as he arched away. “Hard to say. Further research is necessary.”   
  
Poe’s whole face lit like a damn sunrise and he laughed, a high, light little sound Finn had never heard him make before. “Stars, Finn,” he said, breathless. “Stars… Get back here.”   
  
“Was never that far away,” Finn tried to say, except Poe was kissing him again and suddenly speaking didn’t seem so important. Dimly he registered the sound of his cane falling to the ground. He wrapped his other arm around Poe’s back.  
  
“How are you doing?” Poe murmured into Finn’s ear sometime later. “Need to sit or anything? Lie down? We could lie down. My room’s close by.”   
  
Finn’s legs were entwined with Poe’s, a feat of balance he wouldn’t have thought possible a few weeks ago.  Of course, a few weeks ago he also hadn’t thought it was possible that Poe Dameron, daring Resistance pilot, would gasp audibly when someone bit his earlobe. Or even that he, Finn, would become privy to this piece of information.   
  
“Your room’s a mess,” he said, and set his teeth against Poe’s ear again.  
  
Poe arched. “I just,” he breathed, “changed the sheets yesterday. For what that’s worth.”  
  
“Mm.” Finn paused long enough to glance around, then shuffled a step backward. “Nice looking wall right there, though.”    
  
Poe’s brows shot up. Finn shrugged. “I just don’t want to go back inside yet.”   
  
Poe remained where he was, and for an instant the tiny space between them felt lightyears wide. “You still want to…?” He glanced at Finn’s mouth, to Finn’s eyes, lifted a brow.  
  
Finn would spend hours turning over what he’d said just now, what inflection or expression he’d communicated unintentionally, that led Poe to believe that he wouldn’t want to continue. “Absolutely.”   
  
He took another step back as Poe’s smile emerged again, and Poe followed him, crowding close. Finn felt the wall of the base against his back; it was still warm from the sun.   
  
“Standing’s better than sitting,” he pointed out, as he wrapped an arm around Poe’s waist, as Poe traced Finn’s brow with his finger, as every line on Poe’s face curved and bowed with his grin. Finn let himself sink into this moment, of kissing Poe Dameron outside on a beautiful day, of the sound their breaths hitching and gasping, of the way Poe kept squirming closer, of the sensation of his growing erection and the wonder of knowing that, even if they were discovered out here, no one would punish them for this.  
  
“But you know what,” Finn said, as Poe worked his thigh between Finn’s legs. “I have a room now, too. Don’t I?”   
  
“It’s probably even clean,” Poe replied. “And unoccupied.”   
  
“Oona won’t mind if we kick her out?”  
  
Poe pulled back far enough to waggle his eyebrows at Finn. “She may have, ah, promised not to return until later tonight.”   
  
“Could’ve mentioned that earlier.”   
  
“Could’ve. Guess I didn’t want to go in yet, either.” Poe cupped Finn’s cheeks in his hands.  “Stars, you’re so…”  He stared, eyes flicking back and forth, and then his smile turned sheepish and he buried his face in Finn’s neck.  
  
“What?”  Finn pushed his hands up Poe’s chest, then, when he refused to look up again, fisted his fingers in Poe’s hair.  “I’m so what?”   
  
Poe let Finn pull his head back, but his eyes were closed tight. Finn held him there for the space of three, four heartbeats. “Beautiful,” Poe mumbled at last.  
  
“Really?” Finn loosened his hold on Poe’s hair. Poe didn’t open his eyes. “You think so?”   
  
“Yep.”   
  
Finn regarded Poe until his eyelids flickered and he squinted back at Finn. He was blushing again, spots of color high on his cheeks, and he bit at his lower lip.  In Finn’s hand, Poe’s hair was warm and soft.  
  
“Well,” Finn said. “A few minutes ago I was thinking the same thing about you, so I’d say we’re even.”   
  
Poe blinked, then spluttered a laugh. He reached for Finn again. Finn opened his arms. They stood there, tucked into one another, for what felt like a long, long time. It wasn’t enough to banish the sadness inside of him, Finn acknowledged, even as Poe pulled back enough to kiss Finn again, softly, on his brow and eyelids and nose, even as he kissed Poe back. But here, under the sunshine and blue skies and Poe’s grin, Finn felt that abyss shrink down, down, down, into something he could more easily bear.  
  
  
.  
  
  
They were on their way to Finn’s new room, sneaking down a deserted hallway in the barracks wing, when Poe’s pocket started beeping.  
  
Poe swore, stopped, and fished out his communicator. Finn stopped as well, wheeled himself to face Poe and so was able to watch Poe’s expression change as he studied the screen. He swore again.  
  
“I’ve got to go,” he said, managing to sound weary and furious at the same time. “Operative down. General’s called Pathfinders too. Gotta report.” He looked ready to bolt down the hall. “Probably be out in twenty minutes.” His gaze swung back to Finn. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Finn locked his wheels, reached out his hands. “Help me up,” he said.  Poe pulled him into an embrace and squeezed tight.  
  
“Don’t know how long we’ll be,” he whispered.  
  
“Just do your best to come back,” Finn said. He kissed Poe’s ear to feel him shiver. “Preferably in one piece. I don’t know how to reattach limbs, yet.”  
  
Poe laughed, then pulled back, stepped away. His communicator was beeping again.  
  
“Go on,” Finn said. “See you later.”   
  
Poe nodded. “See you later, Finn.”  
  
Finn watched Poe run, stood there until he could no longer hear Poe’s footsteps echo, and then he sank back down into his chair.  He tried very hard to hold onto the sensation of Poe in his arms, and bolstered himself with the surety that it had _happened_. It was real.   
  
Then, he slowly wheeled himself onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am _so sorry_ this update took like fifty years to complete. Thank you for your patience, and thank you so much for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: This chapter contains two brief allusions to torture

  
  
Finn wouldn’t describe himself as an especially oblivious person, but everyone he encountered the day after Poe left seemed strangely on edge. At first he attributed it to post-party hangovers; he’d had one himself the morning after drinking wine with Poe. Shivi had taken one look at him and asked if he wanted the base’s hangover cure. Finn, who’d just assumed he’d come down with a sudden, painful virus, had gratefully accepted.  
  
But Shivi was gone now, on the mission to rescue that operative, and Kele and Ludo bickered through the entire morning training session. At one point, after Kele had actually snarled in Ludo’s direction, Finn glanced at Iolo, brows raised. But Iolo had just shaken his head and resumed his exercises. Everyone else in the gym kept their eyes to themselves. No asking any of them, then.  
  
He considered getting his tablet from his bunk and reading in the library, but Oona had still been buried under her blankets when he’d left earlier, presumably sleeping off her own hangover. She’d bustled back into their room well after midnight, dropping tools and spare droid parts into her storage locker before clambering up to her bunk. Finn had pretended to be asleep. In truth Oona was a messier roommate than he’d been prepared for, and while she seemed to keep her things confined to her own areas, it was all cluttered in distinctly nest-like ways that made him a little twitchy.  
  
He turned toward the mess hall, instead. It was lunch time anyway.  
  
But even the mess, typically crowded at this time of day, was quiet. A few groups of people clustered around tables, and though Finn saw faces he recognized, no one looked up. Finally he spotted Snap, alone at a table near the wall and staring into a steaming mug clasped between his hands.  
  
“Hey,” Finn called. Snap started.  “I’m going to get some food, do you want anything?”  
  
“Nah, thanks.” He gestured to his mug. “I’m good.”  
  
Finn returned a few minutes later, balancing a tray over one arm and secretly delighted he could do that again. This morning in the washroom he’d noticed he had actual muscle definition in his shoulders and had spent a solid minute flexing for the mirror.  
  
“Vegetables,” Snap observed as Finn set down his tray. “Wise choice.”  
  
“I had enough of those puffballs and dumplings to last the rest of my life.”  Finn hooked his cane around the back of the chair and sat.  
  
Snap picked up his mug in a salute. “You and me both,” he said.  
  
They sat in companionably silence as Finn ate. The vegetables were fibrous and a little bland, but in a way that felt extra healthy, like he was really working for his nutrients. This was what he told himself, even as he acknowledged that he probably wouldn’t go for this particular variety again.  
  
“So,” he said when he’d mostly finished. “What’s going on around here? Is everyone just hungover or did something happen?”  
  
Snap made a noise halfway between a snort and a sigh. His beard twitched as he took a drink.  “Poe told you why he left, right?”  
  
“Operative down, yeah.” Finn had spent the rest of the day in the library, and while he’d appreciated the quiet time, it occurred to him now that perhaps he hadn’t sought solitude so much as been granted it, deliberately.  
  
“Yeah.” Snap sat back and regarded Finn. “Yeah, that doesn’t happen very often.” He pulled a face. “I mean, unless it’s Commander Dameron himself going down, that happens so often it screws our stats. But for everyone else…”  
  
Before, as an ensign, Finn had become intimately familiar with the twisting awareness that his place in life was insignificant, and ignorable. He hadn’t expected to feel it again, certainly not here. He set down his fork. “Did you know them, then?”  
  
Snap shook his head. “And he didn’t know the location of the base, thank the fucking Force, or none of us would’ve slept last night.”  
  
It seemed likely that not many people slept last night anyway. Finn glanced around the mess. Yesterday this time they were literally throwing a party, and today it was like someone had died. Which, in all probability, someone had. And he’d spent the afternoon alone, reading all about Yavin IV. His own sleeplessness he could blame on an unfamiliar room. No one had told him anything until he’d asked.  
  
He looked back at Snap. “And everyone knows this but me.”  
  
“Nah,” Snap said. “Mostly everyone knows what you knew.” He leaned to peer at Finn. “Except they also know what that means. Honestly, does the First Order lose operatives so rarely?”  
  
“I have no idea,” Finn replied. Would this kind of exchange ever feel benign? Ever? “I was just a Stormtrooper.”  
  
“Sorry,” Snap said, after a moment.  
  
“Thanks.” Finn looked down at his tray, suddenly very tired. “But you know what, I’m going to go.” He pushed himself to his feet. “See you around.”  
  
“I’m — I’ll take your dishes back for you.” Snap sounded genuinely contrite.  
  
“Okay. Thanks,” he said again.  Maybe Oona would be gone by now. Maybe he could actually sleep. Maybe when he woke up this stupid day would be over. Maybe, in the meantime, he’d sprout a set of gills and go live in the lake and never talk to anyone again.  
  
His room, when he opened the door a few minutes later, was blessedly empty, and quiet, and the message light was blinking on his tablet. Finn heaved a sigh as one part of his day seemed to click back into place.  He crawled into bed, pulled up the covers, and pressed [ _Download_ ].  
  
“Finn!” Rey’s image peered down at him; she must’ve been standing over the console. Her features softened. “Finn,” she said again in quite a different tone. “I’ve listened to your message five times since last night. I told Luke about it this morning, but only because he asked me what was wrong. It’s funny how just saying stuff aloud can change the way you feel about it. He’s a good listener. You are, too.”  
  
Her eyes were bright as she shook her head. “Three months ago I had no idea what those words even meant, even if they would’ve occurred to me — ‘good listener’ — which they hadn’t, I assure you — and now here I am with two such people as friends.”  
  
Finn squirmed further under his blankets, getting comfortable. If someone had told him three months ago that it was possible for people to smile with their eyes alone, he wouldn’t have believed them. And yet here he was, with two such friends.  
  
“When I was on Jakku I spent the entire time waiting for my family to return. I never thought I was _nothing_ , like you said you did — I knew I must’ve been important to someone, because they told me — I _must_ have been. But it is — was — hard to remember that. Why? Why didn’t they come back?”  
  
She began to pace back and forth. “If I ever do see them again, that’s the first thing I’ll say to them. ‘Why didn’t you come back for me?’ But maybe they died. There’s a part of me that still wants to believe that. They wanted to return and circumstances beyond their control prevented them from doing so. But what if they never intended to return? What if they only told me that, and I spent ten years of my life believing a lie?”  
  
Finally she sat down, slumping toward the screen. “You know what, though? I’ve realized I’m not used to being _something_ to anyone else. Unkar doesn’t count,” she added with a scowl, “and I don’t mean it that way. I had friends, sort of, on Jakku, but Jakku isn’t a good place for making friends, let alone keeping them.”  
  
Finn nodded. Sometimes he marveled at how, of all the people across the galaxy, he’d met Rey, and Poe.  
  
“Luke and I have these routines now,” Rey continued. “We’re around each other almost all day, every day, and sometimes that terrifies me. There are times I feel like I’ve prized myself open and strung myself out, like there is so much more of me out there,” she waved a hand, “than I can control. When I think about it that way I want to throw up.  But at the same time, it’s a bit relieving to know Luke’s going through the same thing as me. He’s lived here by himself for a very long time.  
  
“There are moments when I realize how much I’ve been talking and I stop because I feel absolutely mortified to have filled so much silence with nothing but my voice. But, you know, Luke’s never made me feel that way. Sometimes he does the same thing, just talks until he stops. Especially at first, we were always cutting ourselves off and half-apologizing. But I didn’t know I had so much inside of me to share. I didn’t know I would ever want to share it with anyone.”    
  
Tiny curls had fuzzed around her face and she pushed them back, staring beyond the camera. “Han Solo is the only person I’ve known who’s died, too,” she said softly. “The only one who mattered. Luke told me he felt it, even from here. The instant Han died. That actually made me like him better, because it was obvious he’d wept, and I don’t think I would have let him teach me anything if I hadn’t known he could cry. Does that make any sense? I hardly cry for anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to, sometimes. Unkar used to say it made me weak — ” She stopped, lips pursed, and Finn wondered suddenly how many other things Unkar used to say that still haunted Rey.  
  
“But that can’t be right. One of the reasons I feel so calm around Luke is because he doesn’t pretend to be emotionless. If I say something funny, he laughs. If we’re talking about death, he’s somber. He hasn’t told me this outright, but I know he’s afraid, too. But just knowing that makes me calmer, in a way. He told me the other day that the trick was to acknowledge your feelings without letting them take over. Then he said it took him a over a decade to figure this out, and even longer to feel like he was any good at it. I said it sounded like the point was to keep trying, which made him laugh, and then all he said was, ‘Maybe.’”  
  
There was a beep on Rey’s end, and she stuck out her tongue. “Do you see what I mean about talking too much?” Then her face lit up and she jumped from her chair. “But Finn!” she cried. “ _You can walk again_ , how could I have forgotten this, you can walk again, oh I’m so happy for you!”  
  
Finn laughed as Rey started bouncing around, promising to hold him to his vow to meet her on the tarmac when she and Luke returned. He was still grinning as the message cut off, frozen on Rey in mid-air, beaming.  
  
  
.  
  
  
Three days after the party, Finn made his way down to Tactical.  
  
“Is there a reason none of these stairways have railings?” he asked at one point. He had one hand on his cane and the other braced against the wall — at least there was a wall — while Ludo trailed a step behind.  
  
“So we can leap dramatically from them in the heat of battle,” Ludo responded. Two tech engineers, skipping steps on their way to the next floor, laughed loudly as they darted by. Finn watched how closely their boots came to the edge of the stairs, glanced down at the drop — not far, but far enough to hurt if you fell — and shook his head.  
  
“That’s how I’ll know when I’m better,” he muttered, tightening his grip on his cane. His back was singing its usual song, and if it wasn’t quite as loud as it had been, the fact that it was still there annoyed him. “When I can do stuff like that without thinking.”  
  
Finn had asked for someone to accompany him to the base’s lower levels, and Ludo, claiming he welcomed any excuse to bother the admiral, had volunteered. Kele stayed in the gym to work with Iolo, which made Finn feel obscurely better about his own continuing therapy sessions. If Iolo, who’d only had a broken arm, required extra training in order to heal properly, the time and resources they were spending on his recovery were not extraordinary. Or, extraordinary for other reasons, which Finn intended to address shortly.  
  
Tactical was several levels beneath the surface of the base, but even it hadn’t been spared from the twisting vine and root scars so ubiquitous on ground-level. Finn had been here once before, in the chaotic hours preceding the attack on Starkiller Base, but then, of course, the stairs had been unremarkable. It was possible he too had skipped steps on his way down. He couldn’t remember.  
  
“Finn.” The General was bent over a desk across the room, her face lit by screens. She smiled as she watched him approach. “It’s good to see you.”  
  
Next to her, Admiral Statura straightened and regarded him with a look that was just this side of disapproving. Finn paused, until Ludo rumbled, “You stay down here so much, Nils, it’s a wonder you haven’t sprouted mold.”  
  
The admiral harrumphed and turned away as General Organa laughed. Around them, others looked up, shook their heads and hid their grins.  Finn would never get used to how relaxed everyone was here.  
  
“What can we do for you, Finn?” the General asked as Ludo wandered over to Statura and thwacked him across the back.  
  
Finn looked around again, noted how many people were present, and how many of them were pointedly not listening. There was a chance this hunch of his would backfire. There was a chance he didn’t know the General, or her Resistance, at all. He hoped he was wrong. He hoped his instincts were good. There was only one way to find out.  
  
“You know,” he said, distinctly enough that those nearby would hear him clearly. “It is remarkable that you haven’t made me your prisoner. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because my body, until quite recently, was already doing that for you. In any other outfit, I would have been regarded as a prisoner, no matter what I told you about defecting from your enemies and joining your side of the war. In any other outfit, no matter how well they claimed to fight for the side of justice, I would have been isolated, interrogated, and, probably, eventually, eliminated. The fact that you haven’t treated me like an enemy, not even once, tells me more about this Resistance you’re running than any piece of propaganda you’ve disseminated across the galaxy. Not to say that wasn’t effective, too,” he added, thinking of all those pirated telenovela clips.  
  
Everyone was listening now. Statura was scowling, Ludo staring, and several personnel actually seemed to be recording his words. Leia’s expression had closed, and she regarded him with the kind of sober mask he’d come to expect from superior officers. To see it on her face was unsurprising, and disappointing. He continued.  
  
“I have learned more in the past month than I had been permitted to even think about in my previous nineteen years of life. I can’t help believing this, too, was a design on your part.  Even so, I have also seen how strongly everyone here believes in this cause, and I have seen in myself how good it feels that you all consider me a part of it. Or at least I thought you did. And I know now that I would like you to. I’d like to be a part of this.  
  
“So here I am, no longer quite such a prisoner as my body had made me, and I’m ready to tell you everything. If you want to know, that is.”  
  
There was silence, which Finn had anticipated. He leaned on his cane and fought the urge to roll his shoulders, or shuffle back, or look down. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the General. He trusted her tremendously, to make the best decisions she could for the Resistance. It was just that he wasn’t stupid enough — he hoped — to believe that those decisions would necessarily include him. Not unless he convinced her and everyone present otherwise.  
  
Leia moved around the console to stand before him, hands linked behind her back. They regarded one another. Somewhere across the room, a droid beeped, and was shushed.  
  
Finally she nodded. “I’d wondered if you would be satisfied in Medical.”  
  
“I am satisfied in Medical,” Finn replied. “But feeling satisfied and feeling like I am doing my best are two different things.”  
  
Whatever mask she’d worn had dropped away. Unlike the power he’d known before and still half-expected to find here, the General returned truth with truth, and her expression now was filled with understanding and — was that what respect looked like? He didn’t look away.  
  
“Okay, Finn,” she said at last. “Why don’t you tell us what you know?”  
  
  
.  
  
  
He talked for six hours. He shared almost everything he could remember, most of what he half-remembered, and many of his opinions. They brought him a chair, Leia and her team of admirals and strategists. Even the sec-techs and intel personnel took shifts away from their consoles to listen. They set up tables, ordered food, dumplings and bags of chips and crunchy vegetables, all things you could eat while doing something else. Three droids recorded his testimony, the questions he was asked, and the subsequent mini-discussions that broke out before Leia or Statura or even Ludo, who stayed through the whole thing and was eventually joined by Kele, interrupted to ask Finn another question. And then he would talk some more.  
  
It was exhausting, and exhilarating. The first he’d expected. The second had him up and pacing, insofar as he could pace with the people and consoles littered everywhere, feeling buzzed like he’d had another glass of Poe’s wine. Maybe it was the experience of being heard, of being listened to by a room filled with very intelligent people who treated him like he was very intelligent, too; it felt surprisingly good.  
  
Much of what he said the General and her team seemed to already know, but they knew it from the wrong angles. Their operatives were merchants and smugglers, minor techs in space ports and liveried staff in exclusive clubs. All of them were committed to the Resistance. None of them had been raised by the First Order.  The best sources of information, in Finn’s opinion, came from Threepio’s cadre of droids silently recording the conversations of sympathetic senators and wealthy business owners, but even then it was too easy for these listeners gathered around him to sneer at the political corruption of the powerful and let their own certainties remain unchallenged.  
  
“Every single Trooper,” he said at one point, “is conscripted. Stolen, from wherever they came before.”  
  
“Don’t you dare say,” interrupted a sec-tech, rising from her seat, “you think I should forgive them then.”  
  
“Yow know damn well that’s not what I’m saying,” Finn returned. They were five hours into this conversation and even he didn’t care about protocol anymore. “I’m telling you that this entire terrible machine is made up of people. Humans, like most of you, and everyone like me wasn’t given a choice about whether we wanted to be there or not.”  
  
He gestured with his free hand. “You’ve got all your intelligence and all your operatives and your ace pilots and your secret base, you say you have this resistance to hide behind, and your mistake is in thinking that all of that makes you _better_.”  
  
The room erupted. Finn opened his mouth, closed it, listened hard for an opening, wondered if he hollered loudly enough if he might be permitted to continue. Then, quite suddenly, the cacophony of voices stumbled into silence.  
  
He turned around. Leia was standing on a desk, arms crossed.  
  
“And do you know, Finn,” she said, very quietly. “Do you know what makes us better?”  
  
Finn gripped his cane. “The fact that you choose to be. Again and again. The Resistance kills people, just because they’re Stormtroopers doesn’t change that, but you’re all still trying to be _good_. It’s incredible, honestly. Maybe you don’t see it because anything less than goodness doesn’t seem like a choice to you. But so much of your resistance is in your ability to choose, and in the fact that you’re always trying to make choices that are better, not just than your enemies but better than what you were before.”  
  
He shook his head. “The only choice I was given as a Stormtrooper was to kill, or be killed. That is the machinery of the First Order. They don’t give you alternatives.”  
  
There was a little silence as everyone digested this.    
  
“You made one anyway,” someone called out.  
  
“Only because,” he said, turning, “one of your dashing pilots happened to drop by and give me the excuse.” Sometimes he had horrible daydreams about where he’d be if Poe hadn’t been brought alive aboard the _Finalizer_.  
  
“Do you think if others were given an alternative,” the sec-tech said, “they would take it?”  
  
He thought of his squadmates. He thought of Slip. “Some of the Troopers,” he said eventually. “A few. Not this alternative, I can’t see that happening, but if they had the freedom to choose, I know some would leave.”  
  
“What about higher ups?” Kele asked, not without irony. “Officers? Think any of them are interested in alternative careers?”  
  
“No,” he said, when he was sure. “They’ve made their choices already.” In truth any alternative careers the First Order brass might pursue would likely still involve a great deal of death and destruction, but Finn didn’t think he needed to point that out.  
  
This generated quite a bit of discussion, most of it even sincere. Finn drifted among clusters of techs and droids until he found an empty chair.  He’d told the General that he hadn’t wanted to kill again, not unless he absolutely had to. But his decision today would almost certainly result in the deaths of others, even if they were First Order. Were his efforts to mitigate further violence enough to make up for this? That he was sharing what he knew in an attempt to prevent more massacres, would that balance out the fact that he would still be, however indirectly, responsible for taking lives? Or was he just a hypocrite, trying to convince himself otherwise?  
  
Rey’s words returned to him suddenly. For the first time, he realized he was looking forward to not only her return, but Luke’s as well.  
  
Leia had been slowly circling the room, hands clasped behind her back, and now she came to stand beside Finn. “Do not forget this,” she said, raising her voice until the conversation quieted. “Do not forget what separates us from the First Order, and indeed from all the evils of the galaxy. It is not that we belong to the Resistance, or the Rebellion, or the Alliance, and they do not. It is not that we have a cause worthier than theirs. It is that each of us is choosing, every day, to strive together for something better than what we’ve known before. We are striving to create the kind of peace that survives without violence, and safety that thrives without fear, not just for us and those like us, but for everyone across the galaxy. I do not know if this is possible. But I do know it is better to try, to fight for it, than to give in.”  
  
The sec-tech from earlier whooped, and then the whole room was cheering. Even Statura clapped with some enthusiasm. Leia, brow raised, turned to Finn.  “We’re far from perfect,” she said. “But we are trying.”    
  
Finn smiled. “Thank you for hearing me out, General.”  
  
She smiled back, and nodded. “I’m honored you chose us, Finn. Welcome to the Resistance.”  
  
  
.  
  
  
He woke from a nightmare the following night to find Oona’s face a hairsbreadth from to his. He jumped, slammed into the wall, hissed in pain. Oona muttered something and patted his head.  
  
“What’s up,” he gasped. It was possible Ewoks had different ideas about personal space than humans did. It was possible he’d been friends with one for over a month and had never learned they preferred to have conversations with their bunkmates in the dead of night. “Everything okay?”  
  
Oona muttered again, and then again, the syllables enunciated carefully. Finn sifted through the dregs of the dream and the pain of his now-throbbing back and struggled to translate.  
  
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I was having a bad dream. I’m sorry I woke you up.”  
  
She batted at her ears, then gestured toward the doorway. It was half-open, Finn saw now. Oona spoke again, and several syllables resolved themselves into “droid repair.”  
  
Finn rubbed his eyes and resigned himself to being awake for a while. “So you were coming back and heard me?”  
  
Oona nodded.  
  
“Oh.” Finn leveraged himself up, wincing. Had there ever been a time when he wasn’t in pain? He glanced at his chair, tucked in the space between the end of the bunk and the wall. The prospect of walking right now was too much to contemplate, but he could wheel himself to the library. It wasn’t as if he had to worry about waking Libri. “Well. Maybe I’ll just … go. Let you get some sleep.”  
  
Oona whistled softly, and then bustled over to her storage locker and rooted around.  “Here,” she said, returning with a heap of blankets. “Stars up. Always I feel better, seeing them.”  
  
Finn eased into his chair and let Oona arrange the blankets on his lap. “Oh,” he said again. “I hadn’t thought about that. Sure, I’ll take a look. Ah, could you —?”  He reached for his cane. Oona hooked it into its place on the back of his chair, then opened the door wider.  
  
“Outside this way,” she said, pointing down the corridor. “No stairs, don’t worry.”  
  
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”  
  
Bemused, Finn rolled himself down the hall, dimly red with its strips of night lighting, and thought about friends, and choices, and how remarkably different this felt from every similar moment, before. It was even different from when he lived in the med-wing. He could stay out until dawn, if he wanted. Not-sleeping outside was surely better than not-sleeping in his bed, or even in the library. The idea was curiously relieving.  
  
In his nightmares, with their smooth-edged corridors and endless doorways, the light was bright and relentless. There were no shadows, no open doors, no diverging paths. Muffled yells and screams pressed around him, but his squadmates marched behind him, and the cameras peered down on him, and if he stopped, he would be beaten, and he would die. He must ignore the compulsion to pause, to try to comfort the screamers, or he would be shoved into one of those rooms too, and no one would stop for him. The compulsion grew worse with each step he took. He was never strong enough to ignore it.  
  
Finn shook his head once, and wheeled onward. The floor here was smooth, on just enough of an incline that he could feel it, but not enough that pushing himself was real work. Except for the sound of his breathing, he progressed silently.  He should be nearing the exit soon. For all he knew, this was the same corridor where he and Poe had parted five days before.  
  
And there was someone else here, Finn realized with a start. He coasted to a stop and stared at the figure maybe twenty meters ahead. Under the night lighting he could just make out the suggestion of the person’s shoulders and the lines of their back as they hunched against the wall. Their shoulders heaved, and they curled in on themselves. Finn heard a little gasp, and then another — exactly the kind of muffled sounds a person makes when they don’t want to be found weeping.  
  
Horrified, he started to back away, to find another corridor and another way outside — this was private, he was an intruder — when, from the muddled shadows near the figure’s knees, a red light began to blink. There was a soft, inquiring beep. A whirr of tiny engines. The figure dropped their shoulders and straightened slowly.  
  
Finn took a breath, and it felt like he hadn’t done that recently. He took another one, and then called softly, “…Poe?”  
  
BB-8 zoomed toward him, shrieking. Finn’s Binary was even worse than his Ewokese, but he’d never heard BB-8 sound like this before. “Friend-Finn! Friend-Finn! Friend-Finn,” it cried, before reaching him and dissolving into frantic wails.  
  
Poe was hurt, Finn realized, and flung himself after BB-8 as it caromed back down the hallway. Poe was back, and he was standing so he must not be that hurt, but he was hurt, somehow, and alone, and crying.  
  
“Poe,” he called. The blankets bundled on his lap felt absurd now, and far too warm. “Buddy. Are you alright?”  
  
Poe, it _was_ Poe, his hair still plastered to his head and his flight suit still zipped up, and he turned, and slid down the wall, and wrapped his arms around his knees. BB-8 bumped against his shoulder and hummed.  
  
“M’okay,” Poe mumbled into his knees. “Not injured. Sorry. I’m okay.”  
  
Finn looked at BB-8. It beeped firmly.  
  
“Heartache doesn’t count,” Poe said. BB-8 blatted.  
  
Finn parked his chair, shoved the blankets aside and stood up carefully. Poe remained curled where he was for the space of five, six heartbeats, and then he lifted his head.  
  
“I was on my way outside,” Finn said quietly. He reached for his cane. “I had a bad dream. Oona recommended looking at the stars until I settled down.” It occurred to him that Oona had known exactly what she was doing, directing him down this way. “Would you like to join me?”  
  
Poe stared up at Finn for so long Finn was certain he’d refuse. Finn wasn’t sure he could take that, just now, and braced himself.  
  
“Yeah,” Poe said at last, voice low. “Yeah, okay.” He looked around, nodded when he saw the blankets, and grabbed them as he pushed to his feet. “I even know a good spot.”    
  
BB-8 let out a noise that sounded very much like a sigh of relief. It chortled at Poe, who snorted, before beeping goodbye to Finn and rolling back down the corridor.  
  
Finn tapped his cane on the floor a few times. He looked at Poe, and held out his other hand.  Poe’s shoulders dropped a little more. He grasped Finn’s hand with a squeeze.  
  
“BeeBee’s going to tell Oona you rescued me,” Poe said. His face was shadowed with stubble again, and smudged with tears.  
  
“Did you need rescuing, just now?” Finn asked.  
  
They started walking, shoulders bumping gently, and Finn could see the exit up ahead. Poe’s boots scuffed along the floor.  
  
“I’m glad you found me, Finn,” he said at last.  
  
Outside, the night was balmy and still in a way that reminded Finn of an indrawn breath. He threaded his fingers through Poe’s as they made their way across the tarmac. Aside from their footsteps and the tap of his cane, all was quiet. The air smelled differently at night, fuller and sweeter, though Finn caught veins of exhaust and engine fuel as they passed a line of X-Wings, still clicking softly as they cooled down. He darted a glance upward — between his cane on one side and Poe on the other, his balance was decent — and gasped.  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, wow. Oona wasn’t kidding.”  
  
Poe leaned into him and looked up too. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. Just wait til we get past these lights.”  
  
They walked until the pavement cracked with stubby weeds that gave way to gravel and grass.  This was the way to the lake, Finn realized. That was water he was smelling, water and trees and growing things.  
  
_Nothing smells good on a star destroyer_. He took a deep breath.  
  
Poe nudged him. “You okay?”  
  
“I wanted to ask you that,” he replied. The back of Poe’s hand was soft under Finn’s thumb. “You must’ve just gotten back, then?”  
  
Poe nodded, and guided Finn over the grass, which was riddled with little hummocks that kept catching on his cane. Somehow this lawn had looked smoother from the library’s window. They reached a fairly flat spot not far from the lakeshore, and Poe spread one of Oona’s blankets over the ground. He knelt, looking at Finn with a kind of complicated expression that made Finn wish he had something more than starlight to see by, and then he reached up. Finn allowed himself to fall gently to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Poe, who clung to him in return.  
  
“We were too late,” Poe whispered. “We had him, we almost had him, we were so _close_ , but they strung him apart before we could reach him. I watched him die. The whole time, I watched, we all did, through our fucking scopes, and he never even knew we were there.”  
  
Poe’s voice broke and he wept, great heaving sobs that shook them both. This was what he’d been trying to control, back in the corridor. Release just enough of the pain to make bottling up the rest of it possible. It was a good trick, if you could manage it. Finn tucked his cheek against Poe’s head and felt obscurely glad that Oona had woken him, that Poe wouldn’t have to deal with this alone.    
  
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so, so sorry.” What else was there to say? Finn’s chest was too-full and aching, and tears ran down his own cheeks, but he couldn’t take away Poe’s grief any more than he could erase his own. He could hold his friend, let Poe hold him, and thank the Force and the stars and whatever was listening that Poe had returned this time.  “I’m here. I’m here, and I’m so sorry.”  
  
He stroked Poe’s back and kissed his hair and ignored the way his own back was beginning to ache, and he waited for Poe to cry himself out. It didn’t take so very long. At last, Poe sniffed mightily, and sighed, and Finn felt the tension in his body ease somewhat. Finn loosened his arms enough to let Poe know he could pull away if he wanted to, but Poe held on for a minute longer. Gradually his breathing slowed.  
  
“Sorry about your shirt,” he said finally, sitting up. He rubbed his hands over his face and twisted his mouth into something approximating a smile.  
  
“It’ll dry.” Then, because Finn’s back was rapidly transitioning from a steady groan to an actual snarl, he added, “I gotta lie down, sorry.”  
  
He managed not to wince as he eased himself on the blanket, but he still had to spend a minute breathing slowly, waiting for his body to relax. From this angle, the sky was truly incredible. Stars, as far as the eye could see. Finn looked back at Poe.  
  
Poe had produced a rag from his pocket and blew his nose with a honk. Then he sat, legs crossed on the blanket, and gazed down at Finn.  
  
“You’re beautiful under starlight.”  
  
Finn opened his mouth — in surprise, to offer similar observations, to turn it into a joke, he wasn’t sure, but in the end he just looked back and said, “Thank you.”  
  
Poe flashed a grin, a real one this time, and then ducked his head.  “I’m sorry I smell so bad right now,” he mumbled. “I was gonna shower after the debrief, but instead… Well. Sorry.”  
  
Finn reached for Poe’s hand and tugged until Poe was hovering over him. “You definitely smell,” he said, sniffing loudly. “But I don’t think it’s bad. You smell like you, just …” He sniffed again, then kissed Poe’s hand. “Highly concentrated.”  
  
Poe snorted, but he sat back.    
  
“Take off your suit, if it worries you that much,” Finn said. “Air yourself out.”  
  
Poe stared at Finn for half a second, and then he nodded and stood.  Underneath his flight suit, Finn learned a few moments later, Poe wore a teeshirt and a pair of skivvies and nothing else. Again Finn wished it was light enough to see clearly.  
  
Though it wasn’t a particularly cool night, Poe arranged the remaining blankets carefully over Finn, and then himself. He hesitated. “I don’t know why this is bothering me so much,” he said.  
  
Finn again thought of Rey’s latest message. When had Poe last wept like that in front of anyone else? He stretched out his hand to pull gently on Poe’s sleeve. “Come here.”  
  
Poe shuddered and sank down beside Finn. He was warm enough that Finn suspected the blankets might become superfluous, especially if he continued to lay tucked against Finn’s side. Above them, the stars spilled across the sky, huge whorls and tiny clusters and bright planets glimmering through the atmosphere. Nothing was familiar, despite the fact that he’d probably studied maps of some of those systems before. But he’d never seen the stars from this particular perspective. It was breathtaking, and strangely humbling. When he told Poe this, Poe tilted his head to look up, too.  
  
“I don’t know what it is,” he said softly. “About seeing stars while planetside. You think they’d look the same, or be even more amazing when you’re out there, but nothing moves me in quite the same way as this.”  
  
They were silent for some time, staring upward. Then Poe turned, propped himself on one elbow, and brushed Finn’s cheek with his thumb. Finn realized he’d begun to cry.  
  
“I’m not sad,” he said, wiping his face. “I don’t feel sad.” He ran his own fingers over Poe’s brow, and down to the edges of his tiny smile. “I feel…”  
  
Quaking, with the beauty of the stars and this incredible man gazing down at him, this man who’d returned, to this base that was still secret and this planet that was still safe, to this blanket by lake on this warm spring night that contained everything Finn’s nightmares did not.  
  
“‘Happy’ is not a big enough word,” he finished.  
  
Poe’s smile deepened. “I get what you mean,” he said.  
  
Finn let his fingers drift to the back of Poe’s neck, just below his hairline. “If you want,” he murmured, watching Poe’s eyes widen slightly.  
  
Poe searched his face, his own expression complicated again. “I want,” he replied at last. “Do you?”  
  
Finn curled his fingers into Poe’s hair and tugged.  
  
Kisses that involved no trace of sugar-filled puffball could not possibly be sweet, but that was the only word that came to mind as Poe’s mouth met his. Poe’s stubble was prickly, and his hair was greasy, and he definitely did not taste like dessert, and as Poe’s hand carefully cupped Finn’s cheek Finn knew he wouldn’t be anywhere else in the galaxy right now. It was incredible that something so quiet and so gentle could make him feel so much. They kissed each other’s tears away, kissed softly and sleepily and without purpose, until it seemed to Finn that he’d half melted into the ground. And every time he opened his eyes, Finn saw his friend, the lines of his smile and the curve of his neck and his bowing mouth, and Poe’s own eyes, glimmering back. And always, above them, the stars. There were no words big enough to encompass all of this.  
   
“I have so much to tell you,” Finn murmured at last, as Poe tucked his head against Finn’s shoulder and Finn curled into Poe. They were both hovering on the edge of sleep. “Tomorrow. You’ll be here tomorrow.”  
  
“Good,” Poe said. “Yes. I’ll be here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One could, perhaps, summarize this chapter thusly: "In which a certain country held a major election with unfortunate results, and your author spent a month not writing anything, another month shoving All The Feelings into entirely new scenes, and two more months wrestling with those scenes because who the heck knows if they should actually be there."
> 
> I could probably spend the next year tweaking this chapter, because it's not quite right and I know it and probably you know it and now we all know it, but maybe you could do what I've been doing and just blame The Election/The Eternal Hellscape Indefinite for all this not-quite-right-ness here. This chapter's done enough. I hope. Thank you for reading. c:

**Author's Note:**

> If you like what you read, make my week & leave a comment! <3


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